05/11/2020 Across the world, scientists and public health experts are producing new ideas, knowledge and technologies to combat COVID-19. The degree of cross-border sharing of data, research methods and evidence has been heartwarming, and underlines the vital role played by trans-national communities of scientists and experts. However, the story of every epidemic is a story of the interplay between knowledge, ideology and politics. And within each of these stories, the role of government is crucial in determining how epidemics play out in populations. Not only do governments decide on how science and evidence informs policies and plans; they are central to how policies and plans are implemented.

05/02/2020 This year we commemorate 75 years since the end of World War II. I was born 24 years after the end of it, in the city of Bremen in Germany. When I was young I thought: “The war? What a long time ago.” Now, at the age of 51, I realize how little time had passed. Of course I have no personal memories or experiences of wartime, but my life was influenced by those who had suffered. It is important to keep the memories and the debate alive, so that history will not repeat itself. This is why I wrote this text.

04/17/2020 As doctors responding to this crisis, the past few weeks have been filled not just with treatment and crisis management but with frustration. Frustration because the Covid-19 pandemic did not just "sneak up on us." Public health experts have been warning us for decades; we simply chose not to listen. The Trump administration has been rightly criticized for its epically inept response to this crisis.

04/07/2020 We live with a profound paradox. Our lives are powerfully affected by worldwide economic, communications, transportation, food supply, and entertainment systems. Yet we continue an outdated faith in the nation-state, with all the divisiveness, competition, and helplessness that faith produces when dealing with planetary problems.

09/20/2019 Millions of children and young people from around the world have been striking from school on Fridays to highlight political inaction on the climate crisis. The Youth Climate Strikers called on adults everywhere to get behind them on the 20th September and demand urgent climate action.

Medact has been working with healthcare workers across the UK to show health sector support for the youth climate strikes. On the 20th September, groups of healthcare workers took to the streets to participate in student-organized demonstrations in London, Glasgow, Oxford, Leeds, York, Birmingham, and Bristol. Workplace-based actions, to show support for the students’ demands, were also organised by healthcare workers who could not leave their patients to join the demonstrations.

08/15/2019 The main news from our access to healthcare campaign was the launch of our new online e-action, which allows you to write to the Department of Health and Social Care to tell them that you won’t stand by while they force the NHS to deny care to people who can’t pay.

In July, Medact was also featured in an investigation by the BBC that uncovered shocking examples of the way NHS charging is harming patients and embedding discrimination into the NHS. The show also featured an interview with an Overseas Visitor Manager – whose job it is to find and charge patients – in which they revealed how they would simply scan hospital lists and pick out people with “foreign sounding names”.

08/15/2019 Our Fossil Free Health campaign had another big win in July: the Royal College of Emergency Medicine divested from fossil fuels! Huge congratulations to all of the Medact members and friends - Zoe, Michael, James, Tim, Sandy and Izzy - whose amazing work helped make this happen.

We are now writing to the Royal College of Midwives to encourage them to make the same bold step: please sign and share our letter with any midwives you know!

Medact is also partnering in the upcoming Fossil Free UK weekend training and networking event for fossil fuel divestment activists. This will include a number of health-specific divestment sessions and we’re hoping that our Fossil Free Health campaign will be well represented.Final date is TBC, but will be either 18-20th or 25-27th October.

07/23/2019 Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is mobilizing thousands of doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals to raise the alarm about the mistreatment of people seeking asylum in the United States, and to use evidence to challenge cruel U.S. policies. Yesterday, PHR Asylum Network member and child psychiatrist Dr. Amy Cohen testified before a U.S. Senate committee hearing on the treatment of children at the U.S. southern border. In her powerful remarks to Congress, she asked: “Can we not agree that children running for their lives deserve our care and a chance to heal and grow? That these policies demean us all and reduce our standing in the world? Surely as doctors and legislators, as human beings, we must be able to come together on this.”

07/17/2019 PHR welcomes a Turkish court’s recent acquittal of Dr. Şebnem Korur Fincancı, a prominent human rights defender, anti-torture advocate, and PHR partner and 2017 gala honoree. Dr. Fincancı, president of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, was cleared of 2016 charges of disseminating “terrorist propaganda” after she guest edited a Kurdish newspaper critical of the Turkish government – but she continues to face a separate prison sentence for signing a peace petition that year. PHR Executive Director Donna McKay said: “While Dr. Fincancı’s acquittal is welcome news, she and many other physicians remain under threat of conviction and imprisonment simply for exercising their right to freedom of expression.” PHR calls on the Turkish government to respect freedom of speech and cease the persecution of medical professionals.

06/26/2019 Medical neglect. Inconsistent medical records. Disregard of doctors’ recommendations. These are just some of the disturbing conditions that have become the norm at Guantánamo Bay detention center, where new investigations conducted by PHR and the Center for Victims of Torture have revealed systemic and longstanding deficiencies in care for detainees. The suffering endured by detainees directly contradicts U.S. officials’ claims that detainees are receiving adequate care and provides further evidence that Guantánamo should be closed immediately.

05/13/2019 Patients Not Passports – challenging healthcare charging in the NHS is a new Medact briefing paper examining NHS charging and the introduction of immigration controls in the NHS. It is designed to be a tool used to support people in campaigning against the Hostile Environment. It sets out the policy and ideological background to NHS charging; reframes and challenges some of the arguments used to justify the policies; and presents evidence and analysis of the likely impact of restricting access to the NHS. It also includes new data on NHS Trust’s response to the policy and reveals how little has been done to mitigate or monitor the harm it will cause.

more on medact.org

05/06/2019 A profit-driven, extractive economy is severely undermining the life support systems of the planet and exacerbating health inequities around the world. The fossil fuel industry epitomises the worst of what drives this system, and is responsible for impacting the health of hundreds of millions of people, through the climate change that it is driving. Those worst affected are people of colour in the global South. Meanwhile the profits of the fossil fuel industry are concentrated in the global North.

09/22/2018 On 22nd September Medact members tok part in the ‘Nae Nukes Anywhere’ peace rally at the Faslane Nuclear Base – home to the UK’s Trident submarines. Our Medact contingent joined hundreds of protestors on the stretch from the Peace Camp to the North Gate, and inspiring speakers included Makar Jackie Kay (Scottish poet laureate) and fellow poet, US ICAN co-ordinator and longtime friend of Medact Timmon Wallis. Medact members brought the health voice with our banners, placards and by handing out “prescriptions for nuclear disarmament” to interested members of the public.

12/16/2016 Medact’s Annual Forum, this year entitled “Healthy Planet, Better World” took place on 9 – 10 December at Friends House in central London. Hundreds of participants listened to leading speakers on topics such as climate change impacts, food and nuclear energy and joined in the debates. In the breaks many new connections were made in the corridors and intense and productive discussions took place. Highlights at the conference included the launch of “Doctors against Diesel”.

Since 1996, IPPNW Germany has held similar congresses to focus on human rights, global health, the history of medicine, and medical ethics. 70 years after the Nuremberg war crimes trials of physicians in 1946, and 20 years after the first IPPNW "Medicine and Conscience" congress, we will revisit the topic of German doctors and national socialism in today’s research and historical analysis, looking at what we can and need to learn from the past today.

02.03.2015 In a new report published today, Medact and other leading health and climate NGOs argue that the UK health community must phase out its investments in the fossil fuel industry, with air pollution from fossil fuels being responsible for approximately 5% of all UK deaths. The ‘Unhealthy Investments’ report warns that investment in the fossil fuel industry is incompatible with health organisations’ moral and professional responsibilities to address these direct health implications, and the longer-term health impacts of climate change.

10/28/2014 In the first event of the Global Health Justice series, Medact and QMUL hosted a talk titled ‘Global Health Justice: Harnessing academia to inform policy’. This was attended by Global health students and health professionals.

08.09.2014 Peace activists in Piraeus and Athens, the capital of Greece, welcomed the Peace Boat (Ocean Dream) to the main Greek Port of Pireas at the end of a round the world voyage for the abolition and the total ban of nuclear weapons. Upon arrival to the Port of Piraeus Mr Yuki Hirayama, on behalf of PeaceBoat and Greek peace organizations, handed the Mayor of Piraeas, Mr Yannis Moralis, a letter from the Mayor of Hiroshima, Mr. Kazumi Matsui, in his capacity as President of the “Mayors for Peace” international movement. Mayors for Peace promotes the gobal 2020 vision campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons by the year 2020.

11/21/2011 Medact's new report "Preventing Torture: the role of physicians and their professional organisations: principles and practice" was launched in September with a Comment piece in the Lancet. The report considers how professional medical bodies can more effectively work towards eliminating torture, both through the support they give their members, and in their response to medical complicity. it concludes with recommendaitons for National Medical Associations and for the World Medical Association. There is clear evidence that there is still much to be done both to protect medical professionals who expose torture, and to prevent medical complicity in it. This report is part of a 'work in progress' to address this unacceptable siutation.

09/15/2007 In 2006 Medact promoted the right of all people to the highest attainable standard of health inmany diverse situations. This is a right not even guaranteed to some of the most vulnerable people in the UK. Through the Refugee Health Network and the Reaching Out Project, Medact tried to ensure that "failed" asylumseekers have access to healthcare. Meanwhile the NHS continues to benefit from health professionals trained overseas, often by far poorer governments than our own.

05/03/2006 In the Refugee Camp project (ReCap), medical students from all over the world have the chance to live and work in a refugee camp for one month each summer, mainly working in the health units and with the children of the camps. For the past two years, our Palestinian students have hosted groups of IPPNW students in Bethlehem refugee camps and since last year, IFMSA has joined this program.