> Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 21:17:05 -0500
> From: Yoshie Furuhashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Yes, family planning is important. The question is who runs family
> planning programs. I don't like the idea of "international family
> planning organizations" running them. I'd rather see Indian women's
> movement or Indian leftist movement (like the CP) running them. The
> same goes for women of any other poor nation.
Right on. I have in Zimbabwe, many times, witnessed the ludicrous,
outrageous sight of US AID flunkees (with local hires, at about
$2/day) wandering out to rural (peasant) areas to push family
planning in isolated villages as a discrete, once-off primary
healthcare intervention. Meanwhile other US AID flunkees were pushing
structural adjustment in Zim, whose effects on the health budget were
devastating. So utilisation rates in once-vibrant rural clinics fell
dramatically as central budgets declined and futile cost-recovery
began. As a result, visits by those well-resourced int'l NGOs--driven
by Malthusian conviction--were the only healthcare interventions
experienced by most villagers. But because it was funded by US AID,
the family planning cadres never did anything to promote PHC and
instead just carried on with their once-off, disconnected
interventions, effectively setting up a parallel system while the
state withered away. (Unfortunately, the ban on abortion advocacy
won't change matters, as it also existed under the Reagan
Administration, when this problem became noticeable.)
The new line from more advanced progressive technical folk based in
Harare, indeed, is to cancel debt and also cancel aid. I bet it'll
catch on as a general line of (Jubilee 2000-type) argumentation...
