FIRST REGIONAL MEETING ON WOMEN AND HEALTH IN LATIN AMERICA

People's Health Begins with Women's Health was the title of the First Regional Meeting on Women and Health in Latin America, held in Valle de Tenza, Colombia from 28 May to 2 June 1984. It was organized by the Corporacion Regional por el Desarrollo Integral de la Mujer y la Familia, a feminist research and action group which is working on the issue of women's health.

More than seventy women from Central, South and North America participated, all of them involved in some form of alternative work on women and health: research, action, and the creation of alternative information channels. The purpose of the meeting was to exchange experiences and information on the work the groups are doing; to make an inventory of the feminist groups working on women and health, the specific issues they are working on and the methodology used; to explore possible ways of working with public institutions; to establish a regional feminist health network.

During the six days of the meeting, the women met in workshops to discuss issues such as: Unequal Power Relationships between Doctors and Patients, the Growing Medicalization of Health and Illness, Sexism in Medical Practice, Physical and Sexual Violence, Mental Health, Alternative Health Information, Contraception. Practical work shops and audiovisual presentations also had an important place in the meeting.

The coordinator of the meeting, Luz Helena Sanchez, said at the opening session:

"The patriarchal conception of society has meant that science in general and health in particular is impregnated with ideologies which do not take into account the real needs of women and which, on the contrary, reinforce women's secondary position.

"In the last few decades, this mentality has been reflected in an aggressiveness in the implementation of population policies, using methods which are not always good for women's health and which often put women's lives at risk."

The participants in this meeting came from women's groups and organizations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico and the USA. Norma Swenson of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective shared the experiences of the women's health movement in the USA and announced the new edition of Our Bodies Ourselves which will be at least 800-pages long. Isis International prepared a background document for the meeting on Women's Alternative Health Networks and Information. We" will be preparing an account of the conclusions of this significant event: the first time that feminists from all over Latin America have come together to discuss and work specifically on women's health issues and to strengthen the women's health movement in the region.

Report by Isis International, represented at the meeting by Gabriela Charnes.

European women and health documentation centers meet

Women and Health Documentation Centers meeting in Bologna, Italy, from 15 to 18 May 1984, stressed the need to create a network among themselves. Sponsored by the Regional Office for Europe of the World Health Organization and the Emilia Romagna Regional Government, the workshop was the result of a recommendation from the Women and Health Conference held in Edinburgh. Scotland in May 1983. Janine Morgall of the Health Education Unit of WHO/EURO said that the workshop reflects the goals of both WHO in its programs of Health For All by 2000 and its commitment to the UN Decade for Women, as well as those of the Health Education Unit to encourage all forms of health education that effectively put information into the hands of people at the community level.

Seven documentation centers gave presentations during the workshop. Some are only documentation centers, others also offer health counseling and services. Some are directed to specific groups of women, others to all women; some are focused on a national level, others on an international one. But all of these documentation centers are interested in improving women's access to health information.

From the discussions, the following areas of common problems emerged: the balance maintained among the collection and classification of material; the answering of enquiries and the promotion or production of health information; the division of labor within the center; and the difficulty of reconciling efficiency with -democratic decision-making; funding problems; the use of technology in documentation centers; and the necessity of creating a network among documentation centers on women and health.

Aspects of such a network that need further discussion are: the mechanisms for the exchange of information among centers; the eventual unification of the classification systems we use and their relation to available data bases and computer software; how to avoid duplication of collection while guaranteeing ready access to actual documents and the development of criteria for the production of health education materials addressed to women's health. Clearly future meetings will be needed before these problems can be solved. In the meantime, we liave agreed to maintain contacts among the documentation centers present at the workshop by exchanging materials.

The workshop identified the importance of small, local, community-based women and health documentation centers in the delivery and production of health education information. The workshop recommended that WHO/ F.URO support such documentation centers, that it identify and distribute health information in local languages especially for migrant and ethnic minority women, that it facilitate wider access of consumer groups to existing information services and data bases, that there be a workshop or meeting to foster collaboration between these documentation centers and primary health care professionals, that the potential of women and health documentation centers be recognized in that women play a key role in health education as both providers and users thus making these centers potentially of benefit to many other groups and persons to support self-help and other community help initiatives.

For further information contact: Janine Morgall, Health Education Unit, World Health Organization, 8 Scherfigsvej, DK2100 Copenhagen 0 , Denmark.

Report by the Cooperative DO.RI.S. (Documentazione Ricerca Salute), Vicolo San Francesco a Ripa 17, 00153 Rome, Italy

.INTERNATIONAL  TRIBUNAL AND MEETING ON REPRODUCTIVE  RIGHTS

22 - 28 July 1984, Amsterdam, Netherlands

ICASC " The International Contraception, Abortion and Sterilization Campaign and Wij Vrouwen Eisen are organizing an International Tribunal and Meeting on Reproductive Rights. Like the Third International Women and Health Meeting in Geneva in 1981, it will bring together several hundred women active in reproductive rights and women's health issues, self-help groups and the feminist press and media. Women are coming from both Third World and industrialized countries.

Part of the meeting will be a Tribunal to expose violations of women's rights to decide when and if to have children, and to hear about women's experiences and struggles. For the rest, women will meet in small workshops to share experiences and discuss the politics of reproductive rights and the work we are doing, nationally and internationally, networking, solidarity and proposals for the future.

Suggestions for workshop sessions have come from all over the world and will include drugs, self-help, pregnancy, child birth, forced sterilizations, reproductive technology, infertility, health care systems and more. There will be interpretation in English, French and Spanish. There will also be book stalls, films and videos.

For more information contact: ICASC, 374 Grays Inn Road, London WCl, England. Tel: 278-0153

PROTEST PLANNED AT POPULATION CONFERENCE  IN MEXICO, August 1984

The United Nations is holding an International Population Conference in Mexico, 6-12 August 1984.

We are inviting women everywhere to meet outside the conference building to protest the official population control policies that do not take into account the desires and needs of women. We will also be protesting against the use of contraceptives which are harmful to our health.

For more information contact:

Guadalupe Mainero/CIDHAL AC, Apartado
579, Cuernavaca 62000, Morelos, Mexico,
Tel: 13 88 94