Support for Hungarian Campaigners Fighting Privatisation of Hospitals and Surgeries

We are concerned citizens from around the world writing to express our support for you in the coming referendum of 5 December 2004 to be held in Hungary on the issue of privatization of hospitals and surgeries. We wish to support your struggle to keep these public goods in the hands of the government.

Evidence from Belgium to Russia to the UK to the United States has shown that even though initial health care systems are far from perfect, privatisation undermines access to health care still further and compromises the essential principle of equity.

The attainment of the highest possible level of health and well-being is a fundamental human right. Governments have a fundamental responsibility to ensure universal access to quality health care according to peoples needs and not according to their ability to pay.

Around the world, public institutions are being undermined and weakened. Many of their responsibilities have been transferred to the private sector, particularly corporations, or to other national and international institutions, which are rarely accountable to the people.

Privatisation of health services is part of the process of economic globalisation and liberalisation which have increased inequalities within as well as between nations. There is more and more evidence of this - a classic example is that of the Colombian Health System. In Colombia before the 1993 reform of the health system, 25\% of the population did not have access to healthcare. Now, after the reform, 42\% of the population (17 million people, most of them poor) does not have health insurance and hence does not have access to health services.

The Hungarian Minister of Health, Jeno Racz, while arguing for involvement of private capital has in a recent interview with Magyar Hirlap openly stated that Hungary can potentially become "a health tourism center" for EU citizens, and that foreign investment is primarily required to make "hospitals suitable for receiving foreign patients." In the same interview, the Minister states, "it is also a fact that social groups in more disadvantaged positions use fewer health service provisions." This shows that the Hungarian Health Minister is prioritising the needs of wealthy, non-Hungarian Europeans over the needs of the Hungarian people including those who are particularly vulnerable such as people on low incomes, the elderly, single mothers and people with disabilities.

The privatisation of hospitals and surgeries is potentially just the start of the privatisation of the whole of the health care system in Hungary. The referendum to be held on December 5 presents a landmark opportunity for the people of Hungary to stop the threat of the privatisation of their health care system and stop the threat to unaccountable, for profit, inequitable health care.

The Hungarian referendum of December 5, asks the following question- "Do you agree that the Institutions of Public Health Services, the Hospitals remain in State and Municipal ownership, and for this reason the Hungarian National Assembly abrogate the contrasting law?". We support the Anti-privatisation campaigners who are urging the Hungarian people to stop the privatisation of healthcare in Hungary and vote YES in this referendum.