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News in brief
INDIA
India’s health calamity and economic catastrophe
Nearly 80 per cent of the estimated 70 million people around the world who fell into extreme poverty at the onset of COVID-19 in 2020 were from India, a recent World Bank report has revealed.
Renowned Indian economist Jayati Ghosh said COVID was “undoubtedly India’s worst health calamity in at least a century”. But she said the pandemic’s consequences go beyond the direct effects on health and mortality. “There were very significant policy failures – owing to government action and inaction – that were responsible for widespread and significant damage to Indian livelihoods and for the country’s decline in terms of many basic indicators of economic well-being,” she wrote in the online journal Project Syndicate. She said that while the country already suffered from glaring inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunities long before COVID-19, the government’s pandemic response has taken them to “unimaginable extremes”. “Even as Indian workers faced poverty, hunger, and ever-greater material insecurity due to the pandemic, money and resources continued to flow from the poor and the middle class to the country’s largest corporations and wealthiest individuals. “At the heart of India’s self-inflicted economic catastrophe is the government’s decision to provide very little compensation or social protection, even as COVID-19 lockdowns deprived hundreds of millions of their livelihoods for several months.”
UNITED KINGDOM
British nurses vote for historic national strike
300,000 members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) have voted for a first ever national strike, which is expected to take place before Christmas. The RCN said the government has failed to address a workforce crisis and that the “exploitation of nursing staff cannot be tolerated any longer”, the Guardian reported. An analysis by the Nuffield Trust published earlier this year found that 40,365 nurses quit the National Health Service in the year to June 2022 – equivalent to one in nine. The RCN said that since the Conservative Party took power in 2010, the pay of some experienced nurses has fallen by 20 per cent in real terms. They have called for a pay award rise of 5 per cent plus inflation – a total of about 15 per cent. Pat Cullen, RCN general secretary and chief executive, said: “Patients are at great risk when there aren’t enough nurses. Huge numbers of staff – both experienced and newer recruits – are deciding they cannot see a future in a nursing profession that is not valued nor treated fairly. “Our strike action will be as much for patients as it is for nurses – we have their support in doing this.” Unison – the other major union in the NHS – is also balloting its 350,000 members, including porters, nurses, paramedics and cleaners, about strike action in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
longer.’ — Royal College of Nursing
WORLD
World on a “highway to climate hell”: UN chief
Climate change is already killing us, but strong action now can prevent more deaths, said the World Health Organization. “We are in the fight of our lives and we are losing. And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said at the opening of the COP27 UN climate summit in Egypt. “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” The World Health Organization (WHO) said COP27 is especially critical for people’s health across the globe. “Governments must demonstrate far stronger political will and faster action in implementing the legally binding global Paris Agreement on climate change,” it said. WHO said it has “long sounded the alarm, but action has been dangerously inconsistent and far too slow” on climate change. WHO Regional Director for Europe, Dr Hans Kluge, said the world had “witnessed an escalation of heatwaves, droughts and wildfires, all of which have impacted the health of our people”. Europe, he said, had just experienced its hottest summer and hottest August on record, with devastating wildfires and elevated pollution that had “killed many people, displaced many more, and destroyed large swaths of land for several years to come”. “It is estimated that at least 15,000 people died (in Europe) specifically due to the heat in 2022.”
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AUSTRALIA
Financial hardship is bad for our health
The health costs of financial hardship and inequality – on the increase as the cost of living skyrockets – constitute a public health crisis, according to academics.
The health costs of economic disadvantage are “startling”, said researchers from the School of Public Health, University of Sydney. A 2021 Australian Burden of Disease study found the most disadvantaged 20 per cent of Australians die four to six years earlier than the least disadvantaged. One-fifth of the country’s ill-health would be avoided if everyone enjoyed the same socioeconomic circumstances as the top 20 per cent. People in poorer socioeconomic circumstances do worse across almost all health measures. This includes life expectancy, noncommunicable diseases (such as heart disease, diabetes), injuries and, as the COVID pandemic has revealed, infectious diseases. The health burden of intimate partner violence is two-and-a-half times higher in the poorest 20 per cent compared with the most advantaged 20 per cent of households. The researchers said Australia’s response to the COVID pandemic shows it is possible to mobilise resources and political will in the face of a public health crisis. “There is plenty of scope to improve this inequality by lifting benefit levels to keep Australians out of poverty. (It) requires a collective commitment to ‘levelling up’ society,” they wrote in The Conversation.
AUSTRALIA
10 days’ paid Family and Domestic Violence leave enshrined in law
Family and Domestic Violence leave is now a universal right in Australia. Years of campaigning by unions have led to Family and Domestic Violence leave being embedded in awards for more than 2.6 million workers. Now the Albanese government has enshrined it in law, making it a universal entitlement and extending coverage to another 8.44 million workers, including casuals. The ACTU said that, on average, it costs $18,000 to escape a violent relationship in Australia and economic security is a key factor determining whether a person can escape a dangerous relationship. Paid Family and Domestic Violence leave will save lives, it said. “No worker should ever have had to choose between putting food on the table and their safety, and economic security is a key factor determining whether a person subjected to violence at home can escape a dangerous relationship or not,” said ACTU President, Michele O’Neil. “It cannot be understated just how important winning paid Family and Domestic Violence leave in the National Employment Standards is.” The new law followed on the heels of a commitment by the Albanese government in the federal budget to dedicate $42.5 million to the implementation of the Respect@Work report, which outlines a new model for dealing with sexual harassment at work. ‘No worker should ever have had to choose between putting food on the table and their safety.’
AUSTRALIA
Albanese government fulfils election health promises in first budget
There were four big spending commitments on health in the federal budget: aged care, Medicare reform, pharmaceuticals, and Aboriginal health. The budget announced additional annual health and aged care spending of more than $2.8 billion when initiatives are fully implemented by 2025–26. The bulk of this is for policy initiatives flagged in the election campaign. Labor promised several health reform initiatives before the election. One of these – the development of urgent care clinics – is now on track to start in 2022–23, at a cost of $37 million per year. The budget allocated $230 million in a full year to reduce the mandatory Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme co-payment, from the current level of $42.50 per prescription for general beneficiaries to $30. There was an additional investment of $95 million in a full year to improve the health of Indigenous Australians. Professor Stephen Duckett from the School of Population and Global Health at Melbourne University said this commitment to Indigenous health “appears well designed and includes improved infrastructure, expanded training and new health clinics”. Professor Duckett said the budget adopted a broader view of health and wellbeing than seen in previous budgets. “The budget signals the first steps towards adopting a new health and wellbeing framework for measuring societal progress, incorporating broader aspects of everyday life into budget reporting,” he wrote in The Conversation. ‘The additional funding in indigenous health “appears well designed and includes improved infrastructure, expanded training and new health
clinics’ — Professor Stephen Duckett
EUROPE
An explosion of strikes and protests in Europe over cost of living and pay
Workers are taking to the streets to protest high energy prices and mounting costs of living.
Nurses, pilots, postal workers, railway staff and others have walked off the job throughout Europe – all seeking wages that keep pace with inflation, which has soared since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. In Britain, nurses have voted en masse to go on strike, there were three days of strikes by tens of thousands of railway workers and more than 700 airport workers at Heathrow airport voted for a three-day strike last month. In France, November also saw a nationwide day of walkouts and protests by train drivers, teachers and other public sector workers demanding government and employers increase salaries to keep up with inflation. One protester, Victor Mendez, told France 24: “We all feel personally affected. Families are having a hard time buying a carton of eggs, or bread or even meat. That’s not possible in France, one of the world’s richest economies,” he said. In Germany, unions across Europe’s biggest economy are demanding higher wages to compensate for rising inflation. Giant union IG Metal called on thousands of workers to strike across 15 key sites, including Airbus in Hamburg. There have also been waves of strikes and massive rallies in Spain, Belgium, Greece and the Czech Republic. ‘Families are having a hard time buying a carton of eggs, or bread or even meat.’
