War and disease

Natasja Sproat – Traditional Healthcare founder and TCM practitioner

I was lucky enough to be invited to the 2010 Melbourne DPI/NGO 63rd UN conference Advance Global Health: Achieve the MDGs (Global Millennium Development Goals). This was held in Melbourne from 30 August – 1 September 2010.

I am a Traditional Chinese herbalist and acupuncturist, and founder and secretary of a small NGO called Traditional Healthcare. We build sustainable healthcare facilities which combine orthodox and holistic therapies.

Our collaborative partner, One Health Organisation invited me to the conference. They are an independent agency for Holistic Primary Healthcare and the only registered associate of the UN/DPI with a holistic and integrative health focus.

One Health Organisation and Traditional Healthcare seemed to be the only natural therapy representatives at the conference.

It is obvious that UN officials and health workers in NGOs have limited exposure to holistic therapies as these are lacking in aid work around the world.

I saw the benefits of holistic therapies for a rural community in India and experienced the positive impact of running an acupuncture clinic. This is the community’s primary health provider.

Hundreds of patients walked for days to receive acupuncture in the village of Datam in Jharkhand – with remarkable results.

If we could combine orthodox and holistic therapies, the health benefits would be tenfold. It is a shame that:

• holistic therapies are still reserved primarily for those who can afford them in Australia
• traditional medicines, which are often holistic, are not incorporated into local projects that aim to address long-term health.

This was the first time I had been personally exposed to the overwhelming situation of global health, and the huge challenges we face to tackle our global health crisis.

It was an extremely sobering experience.

Being around so many well-learnt and dedicated people was also a humbling experience. I was overwhelmed at how many people dedicate their lives without pay to helping their communities and other areas of the world.

They work to help people who just want to be healthy enough to work and keep their families fed. People whose lives and their children’s lives are in constant danger due to disease and malnutrition.

I felt that the conference lacked a focus on sustainability within health aid organisations. However, many discussions took place that brought a new perspective to global health that I hadn’t thought of. These have changed my ideas on how to achieve global health.

The conference focused on how NGOs can help meet the Global Millennium Development Goals, MDGs. These goals are thought of as a road map for development in global health.

Some of the key issues addressed by the Millennium Development Goals include Goal 4, reducing child mortality; Goal 5, improving maternal health; and Goal 6, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. .

The challenges are overwhelming yet urgent:

• 1 billion people without access to food
• 2.6 billion who lacked access to improved sanitation
• 8 out of 10 without access to safe drinking water who lived in rural areas
• nearly 9 million children who died before the age of five
• at least 529,000 women who die each year of pregnancy-related causes.

The NGOs made a plea: for all Governments, agencies, corporations and individuals to deliver on their human rights obligations to more than a billion people living in poverty, by committing the finances and political will necessary to achieve the Goals.

The United Nations DPI/NGO Conference is a major event in the 2010 United Nations calendar. It runs a few weeks before the start of the sixty-fifth United Nations General Assembly.

Issues highlighted at the DPI/NGO Conference leverages discussion and policy-making at the UN Assembly related to global health. The two most important topics discussed were:

1. What has created our current health crisis
2. How to deliver preventative medicine world wide, which included education, immunisation and sanitation.

Once again, disappointingly, traditional and holistic therapies were not included in discussions of preventative health care within the objectives to meet the MDGs.

Other than the typical preventative healthcare measures like mass immunisation, there were some interesting speakers who thought outside the box.

James Wagwau sat at the 8am Wednesday briefing panel discussion. He was an Education Editor for New Vision, the leading newspaper in Uganda, Kenya.

He stated that:

• disadvantaged areas around the world lack education about healthcare
• the media played a critical role in informing and educating masses of people about where they can receive treatment and how to prevent disease
• bringing these health issues out in the open will create a wake up call to policy makers worldwide.

Wagwau pointed out that information can easily and quickly be received – a cost effective preventative healthcare measure, that the UN should seriously consider.

He explained that for a long time, many children died from treatable illnesses because the children were located in places with no hospitals, or because the mother did not know about a hospital in her area. Many mothers died in childbirth because there was no qualified medical support.

We heard about the brutal practices taking place in Africa today, where many still believe they can cure themselves of AIDS by raping a child. This makes education so much more vital in reducing AIDS, and meeting the sixth MDG.

Sanitisation was another major topic of discussion, as the access of clean water to all parts of the world is paramount for global health. It is an essential priority for health especially in areas of the world suffering from drought or flooding.

Sadly, the forecast of providing sanitized water throughout Africa is 2108 – proof that preventative healthcare has been such low priority to the world agenda.

Bringing statistics like this to light will hopefully change this forecast.

Dr Sue Wareham, from Australia, who also sat on the Wednesday 8am Media briefing, drew a lot of attention when discussing issues around why we are facing this crisis today.

She informed us that 1.46 trillion is spent a year globally on war and weapons, and to meet the MDGs we only need 135 billion.

This figure was shocking. The recognition that our global economy is geared away from health is a major factor in meeting MDs.

War = Poverty = Disease. Peace and Sustainability = Long-term health.

How these topics are related and are a direct cause and effect in our world health crisis was a concept I hadn’t given a lot of attention to, but is so obvious to me now:

To resolve global poverty and health issues, the UN should raise the profile of peace and environmental sustainability as an achievable goal.

Dr Wareham raised the topic about how society remembers positive achievements of humanity rather than focusing on the value of war.

James Wagwau added,

To change our world globally we must influence generations by injecting the value of peace into global education curriculums.

Comments like this proved that world peace is high on the agenda.

Dr Wareham also highlighted that climate change has a major effect on global health. She outlined that meeting our climate change agenda must be a priority to eliminate poverty, which:

1. creates refugees from the swallowing of whole islands in the pacific from raising waters
2. breeds famine and disease from droughts and flooding.

Dr Wareham stated that since World War 2, the increase in output of fossil fuels per solider has gone up considerably: the fossil fuels created by the US army in Afghanistan and Iraq in one year were larger than the total output of the country Bangladesh.

It is obvious that we must look at how to minimise our environmental footprint, and that war not only creates poverty and thus disease, but is also a major contributor to climate change.

One thing I found alarming was the lack of discussion around a proposed sustainable population figure. If we miraculously prevented or cured the communicable and contractible diseases, there are no plans or strategies about how to manage the rapid expansion of the population.

This is unsustainable with the way the world is run presently, again highlighting the importance of environmental management.

Throughout the conference there was a primary focus on the use of orthodox medicine alone, which creates a reliability of foreign aid and pharmaceutical companies. This is unsustainable.

With such issues as global warming creating large-scale health issues today and in the future, I did not hear any discussion about the use of environmentally sustainably energy production for healthcare facilities.

For example, an NGO Water Aid, who is doing a wonderful job in helping 26 countries increase sanitation, gave a lecture on the importance of hand washing with soap to prevent the spread of disease and diarrhea.

This is a major contribution for global health. However, sustainability could be addressed in this scenario. Communities could be taught about how local herbs could be used as a substitute if soap was not available. Or teach them how to make their own soap.

They would not have to rely on foreign aid which creates its own climate footprints through transport. This type of education would boost the local economy and empower the community.

The lecture on AIDs and tuberculosis was well organised with exceptional speakers, however were based on 100% dependency on pharmaceuticals and foreign aid.

Discussions failed to address the various areas of sustainability in decision making – in the areas of the environment, economical viability, and ongoing healthcare. If something is not sustainable, it cannot be sustained – so how can we hope to meet MDGs in the future if we do not factor this into all decision making?

Most of the NGOs that we spoke to were missing the integrative approach of sustainability and the use of holistic healthcare. Concentrating on orthodox medicines alone is unlikely to achieve the most effective, efficient and sustainable method of attaining global health.

It is evident that the UN is not making best use of available resources as, according to the World Health Organisation, 85% of all healthcare workers around the world are complimentary therapists or use traditional medicines.

It seems that the link between the health of the planet and the health of the species living on the planet are intertwined. This is similar to a holistic therapies perspective, where treating the whole person is the only way to treat disease.

As many conditions are preventable, every health care interaction should include prevention support, and provide education on self-management. Healthcare teams that stimulate education of healthcare into communities, and that treat the whole person rather than the disease is likely to change the alarming and disappointing statistics of failed healthcare systems today.

We hope in future conferences we can support a paradigm shift in the utilisation of holistic and Traditional medicines into more NGOs, and one day even into global healthcare policy making.

After attending the conference, I felt reassured in Traditional Healthcare’s approach to sustainable healthcare. To:

• implement western and holistic medicine
• provide education on healthcare
• build our clinic in a sustainable way – environmentally and operationally (the community will be given the autonomy to run the clinic after construction).

However alarming the global health crisis is, I remain positive about these conferences, and believe that many people care.

There are many wonderful NGOS that are working around the world to improve healthcare for marginalised communities. The people that run these NGOs are people like you and me – everyday people with the will to make a change in their local community.

It gives me hope that people like you and I can change these statistics by thinking globally…and acting locally.

Natasja Sproat

The MDGs

• End poverty and hunger
• Universal education
• Gender equality
• Child health
• Maternal health
• Combat HIV/AIDS
• Environmental sustainability
• Global partnerships