Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor
Edited by Jim Yong Kim, Joyce Millen, Alec Irwin and John Gershman
Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine
Available at <http://www.amazon.com>
REVIEW BY STEPHEN LANGFORD
For months I tried to get this book through private suppliers. Angus and Robertson took the details and never got back to me. Finally, a friend in the United States (thanks Anne) sent it to me.
It was worth the trouble, this book is gem. It was recommended to me by Noam Chomsky. He had referred to the traps for poor countries like East Timor set by international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Don't be put off by the book's size. The last third of the book is footnotes, appendices, the index and a list of 62 activist health organisations that are addressing the deeper issues the book takes on. It is a book by activists, for activists: "What happens next, depends on what you do after you put this book down."
Dying for Growth has five parts. Part IV, one of the most impressive, is "The Drug War in Perspective" which tackles the 1996 San Jose Mercury News series of articles on the US government's involvement in drug running by its CIA-Contra connections. The chapter tells the story of US government involvement in illicit drugs, from its war in Vietnam and the funding of anti-communist guerillas in Afghanistan and Central America. It explains how the original Mercury story was neutralised in the mainstream media.
Much of the book is relevant to activists in this country, even if Australia is not between "austerity programs" and "AZT" in the index. Even when it is Peruvians living on 55 cents a day who are being written about, we can relate to "Fujishock" — "reforms" carried out by Peru's President Fujimori which resulted in public health services being de-funded and the poor being expected to pay for privatised services. This was accompanied with the loopy "choice" rhetoric that was perfected in the US in the 1970s. Just as Michael Wooldridge does here.
Did I mention the chapter on the 1984 Bhopal disaster, and the ducking and weaving of Union Carbide to avoid responsibility? There are many aspects of this unusual, readable and inspiring work I cannot cover.
The part of Dying for Growth I gravitate to most is "Alternatives to the Agenda". It kicks off with a chapter on health services in Cuba, and its maligned, but effective, HIV/AIDS policy. A chapter deals with El Salvador's non-government health care groups upon which the pro-US regime waged war in the 1980s. Their struggle now is against being co-opted by US-funded organisations.
Far from constituting grounds for retreat and resignation, the facts presented in Dying for Growth should be a stimulus for committed action. As Chomsky has insisted, the immense power of transnational corporations and the impact of international capitalist financial and political dealings are no reason for ordinary people to surrender to economic fatalism.
Today, Chomsky notes, we see widespread "efforts to make people feel helpless, as if there is some sort of economic law that forces things to happen in a particular way, like the law of gravitation ... [yet] these are all human institutions, they are subject to human will, and they can be eliminated like other tyrannical institutions have been."
One more commendation from Jean Bertrand Aristide, former President of Haiti: "The poor, the ill and the landless take centre stage in this work. They speak of the need to move beyond the tunnel vison of unbridled economic growth and journey on a path that will bring food, education, and adequate health care to all. Bravo to the Institute for Human and Social Justice for exposing the human consequences of unjust global economic policies."
I recently had cause to visit a friend who is sick in St. Vincents Hospital in Sydney. I saw the dedication of the nurses, doctors and other staff. I was impressed that I could take my dog in. Hospitals are not perfect, even the best of them, but I think we should celebrate and defend the good sense of humanity, and dedication, of people working in them.
This book shows that we must not take them for granted. There was an imperfect public health system in the Soviet Union. In Russia, it has been sold off with catastrophic results. On the other hand, try and take your dog into the Commonwealth (a misnomer if there ever was one) Bank, in Oxford St in Paddington, and you will be asked to leave. Can we further sully the bank's filthy lucre? It would seem so.