Zafrullah Chowdhury
(1941-)

Bangladeshi Public Health Advocate
1985 Ramon Magsaysay Award
1992 Right Livelihood Award Winner

birthdate: December 27
birthplace:
Quepara, East Bengal, India (now Bangladesh)

QUOTES

"We have tried to demystify medical care and decrease the control of the medical profession and instead promote the paramedic, the village-level health worker, as the backbone of health care. This has led to both capability building and job creation for the poor, especially poor women, as well as putting health care within the reach of those who have not in the past had access to it."

Inequality is on the increase everywhere in the world. The divisions of North and South, rich and poor, women and men continue to deepen. The push for global patenting will exacerbate these inequalities and inhibit the development potential of our countries.

Cost and availability of drugs is critical. Yet, if patenting is permitted local production of drugs will be cut down and both affordability and availability of drugs will decrease drastically.

The task before all of us here, in the South and in the North, is to organise resistance to the imposition of the existing concept of Intellectual Property Rights used in World Bodies. It is not only detrimental to the peoples and economies of Third World countries, in the long run it will undermine the prospects for global harmony and "one world", and slowly kill the aspirations of the common people all over the world that had been created by the advancement of science.

Ill health is an important factor that forces the poor to remain poor. If they make a little bit of money, one episode of illness can wipe them out.

 

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