Public, universal & comprehensive healthcare

Healthcare services must be holistic and accessible. This means that services should include all facets of physical and mental health, including comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services. Our healthcare systems must be public and free and should be able to support all patients who require general or specialised care.

Tighter state regulation and community based oversight mechanisms on private health providers – including health care services, medical insurance and pharmaceutical manufacturing industries – must be put in place to ensure that these are held accountable to health rights: placing people before profits.

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Public: Our Demands

Our demands:

  • Comprehensive healthcare services must include:
    • Free access to all healthcare services
    • Full access to sexual and reproductive health services
    • Responsible care and quality treatment to persons living with HIV and AIDS
    • Comprehensive condoms, dental dams, other barrier methods and lubricants distribution programmes
    • Access to abortion services without any legal, economic or social restrictions
    • Comprehensive sexuality education
    • Comprehensive and holistic mental health services
    • Prevention and management of co-infections / comorbidities
    • HIV services that include testing, counselling, treatment and care
    • Accessible and comprehensive services in peri-urban and rural areas
    • Promotion of traditional systems of medicine and indigenous knowledge systems relating to health
    • Nutritional inputs and psycho-social support as part of HIV and AIDS care
  • Clinical trials should not be the only way for marginalised and poor people to have access to treatment and healthcare; trials must be conducted with the informed consent of participants following ethical and regulatory principles in drug trials
  • National public healthcare systems should be properly budgeted for, upgraded and staffed to be able to support all patients and service seekers of general or specialised care
  • The provision of services aimed at changing people’s behaviour must not treat key populations and marginalised people as vectors of diseases, and must be informed by an analysis that locates behaviour change in correlation with structural and institutional power
  • The prioritisation of the provision of public healthcare services must be solely informed by the right to health and supported through evidence and research and not by cultural, patriarchal or the religious beliefs of decision-makers, policy-makers or individuals within institutions
  • The private healthcare sector must be regulated and the privatisation of public healthcare services must be avoided
  • The provision of public healthcare services must include interventions that prioritise the poor and the marginalised