Health care advocates demand universal health care for the world's population at international convention in Dhaka.
In 1978, the World Health Organization's Alma Ata conference promised to deliver basic health care for all the world's population. Today, that promise remains unmet in too many countries and cities of the developing world where health is still the prerogative of wealthy elites -- and the poor remain trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty and ill-health.
Frustrated by the failure of the international community to deliver on its promises, doctors, health professionals, and civil rights activists from around the world convened in Dhaka in December 2000 at the People's Health Assembly. Their mission was to draw up a charter of their own demands for health care, framed in the new People's Health Charter.
This third episode in City Life follows the process -- from a fifty thousand-person rally in Calcutta, through heated debates with World Bank spokespeople in Dhaka and argumentative late-night drafting sessions -- to the final triumphant publication of the Charter on the final day of the Assembly.
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