PLAYING CASINO GAMES WITH OUR HEALTH CARE
We can’t play casino games with the right to health care. The current crisis of lack of drugs and medical equipments in our hospitals and clinics is a cause for serious concern. And we do not see any seriousness from the UPND government on how this health crisis is being addressed.
The right to a decent standard of living also obliges governments even those, like ours, which are poor to use the maximum resources available to realise this right. The enjoyment of the right to adequate standard of living entails adequate and equal access to health services for all. This requires an acknowledgement of the problems that beset health services and the willingness to tackle them with the urgency it deserves.
We need to move away from the notion that our health is something to be insured by an “industry”. The notion that it is any part of an industry is a fundamentally wrong. Health is not a commodity. It cannot and ought not to be commodified. Our health should not be used for profit. We need to take back the ownership of our health. Let’s bring the care into “health care” instead of giving it to an “industry.” Our lives depend on it.
Our viewpoint, as socialists, questions whether major improvements in our health system can occur without fundamental changes in the broad social order. One thrust of the field — an assumption also accepted by many non- socialists — is that the problems of the health system reflect the problems of our larger society and cannot be separated from those problems.
Fred M’membe
President of Socialist Party Zambia