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Sunday, September 14, 2008

Engels and the WHO Report


Engels and the WHO Report

by Susan Rosenthal

On August 28, with the pronouncement, “INEQUALITIES ARE KILLING PEOPLE ON A GRAND SCALE,” the World Health Organization’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health released its report,Closing the Gap in a Generation: Health Equity through Action on the Social Determinants of Health.

The Commission confirmed previous reports of health inequities between nations as well as “health gradients” within them. It confirmed that the poor are worse off than those less deprived, the less deprived are worse off than those with average incomes, and so on, up the social hierarchy. It confirmed that this health gradient exists in all nations, including the richest. It also confirmed that health equality cannot be achieved by medical systems alone.

“Water-borne diseases are not caused by a lack of antibiotics but by dirty water, and by the political, social, and economic forces that fail to make clean water available to all; heart disease is caused not by a lack of coronary care units but by the lives people lead, which are shaped by the environments in which they live; obesity is not caused by moral failure on the part of individuals but by the excess availability of high-fat and high-sugar foods.”/.../

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