Movement of the Poor in the United States Pleads for World Intervention in
the Health Care Disaster in the USA

During the week of International Human Rights Day, on December 8, 2003, the
Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU) carried an urgent cry to the World
Health Organization (WHO) from the people of the United States who are
suffering and dying from being denied the basic human right to health care.
The KWRU highlighted the sinful irony that while 87 billion MORE U.S. dollars are
spent on killing in the Iraq war and occupation, millions suffer and die in the US
and worldwide of preventable health care crises.

Forty-four million Americans are without health care on an ongoing basis, and
eighty-five million have been without health care at some point in the last four
years. By official estimates, 18,000 people die every year from not having
access to health care in the United States, and every day, people across the
country, and especially older people, are forced to buy life-sustaining medications
in countries such as Canada and Mexico, because they cannot afford US prices.
And because it is not profitable for companies to make vaccinations in a for-
profit health care system, people in the United States and worldwide go without
basic vaccinations. Hospitals close every day, especially in poor communities
across the United States, because they are not "profitable."

(Since the KWRU members' return from Geneva, it has been announced that
Philadelphia will soon lose a key hospital and trauma center for this reason.)

In Geneva, at the world headquarters of the WHO, we met with representatives
of the World Health Organization who received us to hear our testimonies
about the deadly health care crisis in the United States. They told us we were
the first grassroots group they have met with from the United States.

Carolyn Caesar, a currently homeless mother and new leader in the KWRU told
her story and talked about the effects that being homeless and without health
care has had on her family's lives and health. She shared a book in which she
has documented her personal history as a homeless child and later a homeless
mother, and also as a leader fighting for economic human rights. She is currently
living in a "takeover" house of the KWRU.

Cheri Honkala spoke of her experience of being without health care and of
almost dying just a couple months ago from an infection caused by lack of
dental care. She also spoke of being denied basic vaccinations for her 16-
month old son, because neither he nor she have medical insurance. "I am just
one of millions of people in this situation in our rich country," she repeated
several times.

She spoke of the thousands who die every year because they cannot afford
health care in the United States, even though our country has some of the best
hospitals in the world. Cheri also spoke of the devastating effects of
homelessness, squalid housing conditions, malnutrition, lack of access to
water and heat on the health of millions of families in the United States. And
every day, more and more people join a growing majority of people in the world's
richest country who live in terror of getting sick or of losing their health care.

The delegation from the Kensington Welfare Rights Union went on to inform the
representatives of the World Health Organization of the plans of the KWRU and
some members of the labor movement for a campaign for national health care
this coming year. This campaign will bring together this growing movement of the
poor, labor unions, people without health care from all segments of society,
health care professionals and others to build a unified, mass movement to
force the United States to deal with the health care crisis like the national
emergency that it is.

We will call on our government to redirect our vast national and world resources
toward health for all. And we implore other peoples NOT to follow the deadly
United States model of for-profit health care.

We appealed to the World Health Organization and the international community
to intervene in the health disaster in the US by helping to raise the world's
awarenesss of this crisis. We also asked for humanitarian relief such as
doctors who could provide life saving medical care to the millions of people
who live under threat of death every day from being denied this basic
necessity in the richest country in the world.

For further information about KWRU's upcoming plans for a campaign for
National Health Care, write kwru@kwru.org

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