Frustrations of a Longtime Global Issues Activist; Comment on “Ensuring Global Health Equity in a Post-pandemic Economy”

Document Type : Commentary

Author

People’s Health Movement, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Abstract

Labonté’s first commentary1 concluded with what I wholeheartedly agree, namely that “we need an activist public health movement to ensure there is sufficient political will to adopt them.” In their follow-up commentary, Moers and colleagues2 looked at things from a slightly different angle saying that to achieve equity will need radical changes in economic thinking and policies; they added that advocates needed to be strategic about framing and use hope-based communication and develop attractive and convincing narratives: “By doing so, hopefully we can bring these messages across to larger groups of people.” Well, I think that, together with many others, I have been strategic and radical, but only to accumulate a large bag of disappointments and broken hopes in trying to ‘bring the message across.’ But I come back to memories of so many defeats that I, with others, have lived through. Here, I describe my frustrations but explain why I do not give up hope. 

Keywords

References

  1. Labonté R. Ensuring global health equity in a post-pandemic economy. Int J Health Policy Manag. 2022;11(8):1246-1250. doi:34172/ijhpm.2022.7212
  2. Meurs M, Koutsoumpa M, Huisman V. Ensuring global health equity in a post-pandemic economy: words count! Int J Health Policy Manag. 2023; 12:7794. doi:34172/ijhpm.2023.7794
  3. Fakhri M, Elver H. and De Schutter O. The UN Food Systems Summit: How not to Respond to the Urgency of Reform. Inter Press Service. August 11, 2023. https://www.ipsnews.net/2021/03/un-food-systems-summit-not-respond-urgency-reform/.
  4. Wikipedia website. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing.
  5. People’s Health Movement. WHO Watch website. https://phmovement.org/who-watch/.

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History

  • Receive Date: 13 August 2023
  • Revise Date: 11 October 2023
  • Accept Date: 11 October 2023
  • First Publish Date: 14 October 2023

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