“The struggle for health is a struggle for liberation from poverty, hunger and unfair socio-economic structures”
IPHC
1991
The International People’s Health Council (IPHC) was established in 1991 as a worldwide coalition of people’s health initiatives and socially progressive groups and movements committed to working for the health and rights of disadvantaged people – and ultimately of all people.
The vision of the IPHC was to advance toward ‘Health for All’, viewing health in the broad sense of physical, mental, social, economic and environmental well being.
The inaugural meeting in Nicaragua in December 1991 explored the concept of health in “societies in transition”, where ‘transition’ was used in a positive sense, in terms of change toward healthier, people empowering social structures. The participants were mostly from countries in socio-political turmoil, if not always transition. All were leaders in community health work among disadvantaged groups, many in the struggle for liberation or for far reaching social and political (structural) change. They were from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, the Dominican Republic, the USA, India, Bangladesh, the West Bank and South Africa.
At the end of the meeting a public statement was issued, announcing the newly formed IPHC, its proposed structure and objectives. See full report of the meeting in Health Care in Transition (1992) [13mb].
| IPHC Objective To foster among local, national and international agencies the formulation of economic and health policies that respect equity and the right to health, with an emphasis on primary health care, community-based health and health as a broad crosscutting issue. |
In 1994 a workshop organised by IPHC and the Third World Network assembled for a week of study and discussion focusing on the political economy of the health crisis at the Lone Pine Hotel in Penang in Malaysia (28 November to 2 December 1994). Draft report here [3.8mb]. More about this meeting here.
A larger international gathering was held in Palestine in February 1995 around the theme of ‘The concept of health under national democratic struggle’ [27mb]. [More about this report]
A further gathering in Cape Town in January 1997 was co-sponsored by IPHC, the National Progressive Primary Health Care Network (of South Africa) and the South African Health and Social Services Organisation. The proceedings of this conference were published under the title, ‘Lighten the burden of third world health: the new world order: a challenge to health for all by the year 2000’ [48mb].
The networks and connections from which IPHC participants drew their experiences and into which they, in turn, fed IPHC analyses was impressive. It was well placed to strengthen the link between political analysis and grassroots work and to extend the network’s efforts to promote the political understanding of health as a global issue
The planning and management of the first People’s Health Assembly out of which emerged the People’s Health Movement was a crucial achievement towards which the IPHC made a significant contribution. See the .
As PHM evolved, IPHC, as a loose network of activists, continued to play an important role in contributing to the development of PHM, organizing subsequent PHAs and sustaining the work of PHM at the local, regional and global levels. However, many of the objectives which IPHC had set itself in the early years (see IPHC 2003 The Struggle for Health, [7mb]) are now being carried by PHM including promoting a structural analysis of health politics, promoting the importance of grass roots mobilization and building global solidarity.
The purpose of this archive is to record the work of the IPHC and provide access to the various resources produced
IPHC as an organization and as a loose network of activists is fully integrated within PHM and supportive of the direction that PHM is taking, articulated most recently in the Mar del Plata Declaration (2024).
See also: List of IPHC Resources
See also: Key PHM documents
See also 2004 Evaluation