Claudio Schuftan, MD joins us today to discuss how human rights problems today have solutions, but priorities are determined by politics. It includes a review of Salvador Allende and Latin American social medicine history, the People's Health Movement and International People's Health University, corporate capture of the World Health Organization, how decisions actually get made at the international level of health, the role of civil society actors, the right to health and how it is implemented, the role of economists and economics in maintaining hegemony, cultural relativism and human rights, the tension between the local and the global, mass mobilizations, the class background of medical trainees, popular participation in health, his own story of exile, and how to think and act globally and locally.
Dr. Schuftan is a freelance public health consultant in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and an ex-adjunct associate professor in the Department of International Health at the Tulane School of Public Health in New Orleans, USA. He is a Chilean national and received his MD and pediatrics degree in his native country. Since 1975, he has been working on nutrition, primary health care and human rights issues in more than 50 countries the world over. From 1988-1995 he worked in Kenya. Since 1995, he lives in Vietnam and consults worldwide. He started working on human rights issues in the late 1990s and is the author of a fortnightly column, the Human Rights Reader. Most importantly, he is one of the founding members of the People’s Health Movement.
Recommended Resources: