Dr. Leo Rebello's Observations at the Consultations on Health Futures, Results and Methods
WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION, Geneva

19 to 23 July, 1993 - Salle A - 1st floor.

What might happen
What we want to happen

It is on the second that I want to lay more emphasis.
The present health delivery system is top heavy, over centralised, heavily curative in its approach, costly, and dependency-creating. Unless, it is community-based, decentralized, economical, preventive and democratic, the aim of W.H.O. to make available Health for All will remain only on paper.

Since we are here to consult on Health Futures, the following observations, even though may not fit into the prevailing thought, I hope will be useful, for they are the studied observations. Time permitting, each and every observation can be substaintiated with a vast array of documents.

1.. More amount is spent in the dying days of the patients than on his entire life-span.

2.. Using animals for experiments is not scientific, ethically justified or humane. We will have to adopt a more fool-proof method of Homoeopathic drug proving.

3.. In Crimea (1853-65), Florence Nightingale, a British nurse, by introducing basic hygiene measures reduced by 75% the mortality rate among the wounded. And Dr. M. Lobo has just now demonstrated, citing his studies in Pakistan, of what can be done in as little as 3.5 US$ per head, per annum.

4.. Our research efforts focus presently only on Human Body - very much neglecting the mind and the spirit.
Gene, for example, has the memory of millions of years of evolution. Modern medicine, with all its advances, is yet to understand the concept of 'soul sickness'.

6.. AIDS, for example, is an imaginary monster created by vested interests. There are more AIDS experts than the AIDS patients and will always remain so! Several times more people die in road accidents, with tuberculosis, or due to smoking, drinking alcohol or iatrogenic addiction. It will be in fitness that we concentrated on saving these people too.

7.. Finally, if we are talking of and believing in democracy, then we should give choice to people to select the type of health care that they want. In India, for example, we have six recognised systems of medicine, namely, Ayurveda, Homoeopathy, Allopathy, Naturopathy, Siddha and Unani. But when it comes to allocation of funds, 80% or more are squandered by the Allopaths on 20% urban population, leaving the 80% poor, rural folks to the mercy of elements. Likewise, not even 10% of research funds are given to other proven systems of medicine. If this is not medical hegemony, and if the W.H.O. and the World Bank do not willy-nilly support it, then it will be wise to atleast allocate 10% of research funds to other systems of medicine.

8.. The future health methods will have to recognise that Health Care is Self Care and that the Traditional and Natural Medicines have played and will play a greater role as more and more people are realizing the efficacy of these time-tested methods.

9.. By the turn of 2010 all the drug industries, for example, would have to change to herbal, homoeopatic, flower, biochemic and anthroposophic medicine production.

10.. And the last, but not the least, observation : Presently, the world spends 52,000 million dollars on War, only 4,000 million dollars on Health. This will have to change and change it will!