Holy See addresses healthcare crisis of the world’s poor

(July 10, 2009) The current global economic crisis exacerbated by the swine flu pandemic and the global food security crisis is endangering the health of millions of the worlds poorest, and the solution to this requires an ethical approach to development, centred on the human person rather than on profit. The point was made by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, Permanent Representative of the Holy See to the United Nations in Geneva. He was addressing a meeting on “Current global and national trends and their impact on social development, including public health,” sponsored by the UN’s Economic and Social Council, ECOSOC. “The international community is struggling to find solutions to the financial and economic crisis that greed and lack of ethical responsibility have brought about,” Archbishop Tomassi stated. He expressed the Holy See’s deep concern over predictions by the World Bank that during 2009, an additional 53 to 65 million people will be trapped in extreme poverty and that the number of people chronically hungry will exceed one billion, 800 million of whom live in rural areas where public health is weakest and where innovative health care initiatives are urgent. He noted that a key obstacle to achieving goals in public health is inequality at various levels – between and within countries as well as between racial and ethnic groups – with women among the worst victims. This situation, the archbishop said, is well known to the Catholic Church that sponsors 5,378 hospitals, 18,088 health clinics, 15,448 homes for the elderly and disabled, and other health care programmes throughout the world, especially in isolated and marginalized areas. Archbishop Tomassi pointed out that economic activity cannot solve all social problems through the simple application of commercial logic. What is needed, he said, is an ethical approach to development, centred on the human person rather than on profit.