"Reading the Alma Ata Declaration was hard-hitting"

Reading the Alma Ata Declaration was hard-hitting. The big ideas for all persons regarding health, the importance of our NHS, and then reading the news that the Tories are slowly privatising it off is soul destroying. All health boards across the globe want the same thing for everyone when regarding health, housing, social to end poverty etc. This was in 1978 yet 41 years later things are at all-time low. Services being cut, homelessness on the rise, with obesity being the second biggest killer.

However, food costs are high and benefit cuts can result in poor choice of food. If anything things have deteriorated massively. Doing the social justice exercise and reading the different views expressed was quite difficult  knowing things have depleted over the years. For example, In 2009 – fewer children needed to worry where their next meal is coming from. Forward to 2018 and more children and families worry where their next meal is coming from, including working families. Again the government stated in 2009 that the Welfare state was so generous, it was beneficial to claim “dole”. Fast forward to 2018 and the introduction of a new benefit system, Universal Credit, more working/ non-working in dire straits, choosing between heating and food. With longer waiting times on payments and more debt, poverty and homelessness, this change and uncertainty has caused huge stress and confusion.

To read two different views regarding the same thing “benefits”, it’s hard hitting to know that the upper and middle class look on people on these benefits as ‘scroungers’, wasting tax payer’s money etc. If only they opened their eyes and have a hard look in their cold hearts how poverty plagues society now. Many people are facing hardship more than ever now and this includes the working class also. It must be great to be born into money and not have to worry about where your next meal will come from or where you’ll sleep tonight but this is the questions many have to ask themselves on a daily basis. The WHO Alma-Ata Declaration of 1978 emerged as a major milestone of the twentieth century in the field of public health