Dear Colleagues,
Following on from the success of the event in recent years, I have the pleasure
of inviting you to attend the fourth Swiss Health Cooperation Symposium, which
will be staged again in Basel. This year’s symposium is about Community Action
for Health.
We started preparing the symposium with the following questions in mind: How
can the community contribute to developing “health for all”? What can primary
healthcare initiatives that are rooted in a community achieve under their own
steam and where are their limits? How can “health from below” models be meaningfully
combined with national planning and international action? What role can Swiss
organizations play in community-based health promotion – and where are the limits?
Are active participation and co-ownership by the community at all possible in
programmes that are initiated or promoted externally? How can responsibilities
and capacities within a community be widened and activated and how can traditional
attitudes and role perceptions be changed? What can be done to ensure that all
groups and interests – including disadvantaged ones – within a specific community
have an equal say?
The last two Swiss Health Cooperation Symposia have touched on important aspects
of community-based health promotion. At this year’s event on 9 November in Basel
they will constitute the focus for the exchange of ideas and experience: Where
does Community Action for Health now stand two decades after the Ottawa Charter,
which defined support for community-based health initiatives as the core strategy
of health promotion?
We are confident that this year’s Swiss Health Cooperation Symposium will again
create much food for thought as a platform for political and professional exchanges.
We are also looking forward to a number of remarkable contributions that will
not only appeal to the mind but will also enlighten and move us, for instance
the film from Ecuador’s Amazon Basin, the reading from the South African book,
“The Community is my University”, or the discussion between our guest from Cameroon
and a Swiss physician.
And this year, too, we have endeavoured to ensure that the contributions have
practical relevance and to bridge the divide between the realities of the situation
in the South and East on the one hand and Switzerland on the other, and between
the health sector and other sectors of society and social development.
| Community Action for Health: The
World Health Organization WHO defines Community Action for Health as “collective
efforts by communities which are directed towards increasing community
control over the determinants of health, and thereby improving health”.
The underlying concept of health promotion is one that seeks to enable
people to gain control over their health. It is based on the assumption
that a multitude of individual, social, economic factors influence people's
health, over which people have only limited control but are able to gain
more control. It therefore believes that people and communities are capable
of analysing the factors influencing their health and of planning, implementing
and monitoring actions directed at improving them. Empowerment of people
and communities is seen both, as a means and as a goal of this process.
The document that most closely reflects this understanding of health promotion
is the Ottawa Charter of the WHO. It defines health promotion as “the
process of enabling people to increase control over determinants of their
health, and to improve health” and states that "at the heart of this
process is the empowerment of communities - their ownership and control
of their own endeavours and destinies.” This points to the implications
such a process has on civil society building. (Tobias Schüth, in: Bulletin
von Medicus Mundi Schweiz)
Symposium Postcard. Photo (c) Swiss Red Cross |
The symposium is targeting a broad spectrum of participants active at the national
or international level: professionals and organizations in the health and economic
cooperation fields, representatives from administration and politics, industry
associations, business and the media, and all those with an interest in international
health and economic cooperation.
We hope that careful perusal of the programme will
persuade you to register for the symposium. To do so, please use the online
form on our website. It would give us great pleasure
to be your hosts at the symposium. We’re looking forward to seeing you in Basel!
Yours sincerely,
Nicolaus Lorenz, President
Medicus Mundi Switzerland
Network Health for All
