The BRICS countries announced a major new initiative on Sunday, July 6, the “BRICS Partnership for the Elimination of Socially-Determined Diseases (SDDs).” Its premise is that “health is a fundamental human right,” and its mission is to develop and mobilize the resources and capabilities required to “eliminate” the curable diseases which run rampant under the conditions of poverty and lack of adequate food, sanitation, housing, and health care in which billions of people are still condemned to live today.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva explained in the Summit’s Third Plenary:
“The BRICS are betting on science and technology transfer to put life in first place. In Brazil and around the world, income, schooling, gender, race and place of birth determine who gets sick and who dies. Many of the diseases that kill thousands in our countries … would already have been eradicated if they had affected the Global North…. There is no right to health without investment in basic sanitation, adequate food, quality education, decent housing, work and income.... We are cooperating and acting with solidarity rather than indifference. Putting human dignity at the center of our decisions.”
The Schiller Institute welcomes this BRICS initiative, its founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche having insisted in the third of her proposed Ten Principles for a New International Security and Development Architecture, that every nation requires a modern health system, because “the life expectancy of all people living must be prolonged to the fullest potential.”
