KOCHI: Food security as part of Right to Health and democratisation of information flow is the need of the hour, said Dr Binayak Sen. He was giving the keynote address at the three-day seminar on ‘Right to health vis-a-vis the vulnerable population,’ at Government Law College here on Sunday. It’s not just the effects of inequity but inequity in itself is a major cause for ill health. The presence or absence of inequity decides the health of a nation and not the standard of living. Inequity hits the right to health of the vulnerable population. All state actions should reduce inequity but state action in India produces and encourages inequity which leads to the small section of the rich getting richer and the vast section of the poor turning poorer, he said. India has a lot of problems related to famine, he said. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that it was a shame that 45 per cent of the country’s children under five are malnourished and the National Family Health Survey puts it at 47 per cent. The fact is that 37 per cent of adults are chronically undernourished - having BMI below 18.5 per cent. Adult malnutrition has hit over 50 per cent of the Scheduled Tribes and 60 per cent of the Scheduled Castes. Moreover, 23 per cent of newborns weigh less than 2.5 kg, an indication of malnutrition, which means that mothers are undernourished and prone to diseases due to reduced immunity. It is wrong to associate famine with food shortage. Inequity happens because people want it to happen and make it happen. Even public-private participation in healthcare is such that the cream on the cup will go to the mouth of the corporates, he said. The system is such that poverty denies many of treatment and the right to question doctors. Democratisation of flow of information is required. Real-time social audit has to be digitalised. It should be made mandatory to check diagnosis and treatment protocols in real-time, he said. Earlier, the ABVP activists tried to obstruct Binayak Sen by shouting slogans.
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