The 1985 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership

RESPONSE of Zafrullah Chowdhury

I am honored to be here. We are all members of an uneven and unjust world, where one class is ruling over another; one expropriates the fruit of another's labor. Such exploitation leads to ill health of nations, both physical and mental. Ill health is not just a misfortune but largely a product of the social and economic organization of society.

It is well-known that people with lower incomes tend to have higher morbidity and mortality. Malnutrition is the constant companion of the lower social class. The health and illness of rural people or people in urban slums is neither the act of God nor of their genes, but a measure of the misery caused by present social and economic organization. Every year about five million children under five years of age die of diarrhea. Each year a similar number die from measles, whooping cough, polio, diphtheria and tetanus, all of which are easily preventable through vaccination. One estimate suggests that the cost of providing sufficient Oral Rehydration Salts for treating all cases of diarrhea in the world's 1,000 million children under five years of age would be $300 million a year. Another $500 million would be needed to vaccinate all such children. This may seem high. But what is the world spending on the military?

World military spending in 1982-83 exceeded $600 billion a year, in other words, $1 million a minute. The USA spent one trillion dollars ($1,000 billion) between 1981 and 1984 on arms. Next to the USA, the USSR and the United Kingdom are the largest spenders. Under developing countries are no exception. [I do not like the word "developing" as it does not reflect the truth. Most of the Third World countries are not "developing" but rather "under developing" because of the continuation of past colonialism and imperialism in different disguised forms.] Britain spent $9 billion on health in 1981-82, which represents 5.7 percent of its Gross National Product (GNP), while spending $13 billion on defense. Most Third World countries spend between 25 and 40 percent of the GNP on so-called defense.

One half of one percent of one year's world military spending would provide agricultural implements to allow food deficient, low income countries to attain self-sufficiency by 1990.

While developed countries, with a few exceptions, persistently violate the recommendations of the United Nations to give 0.7 percent of their GNP as development aid to underdeveloped nations, civilized (!) developed countries continue to increase their arms exports to Third World nations. While people go hungry in most underdeveloped countries, purchase of arms is the main item in their budgets. And it may be no coincidence that in many of these, the form of government is military dictatorship.

Where is the world's conscience? Where is our humanity? Has it gone to sleep? No. People all over the world will definitely rise soon against exploitation and imperialism to end human sufferings.

We, the workers in Gonoshasthaya Kendra (GK) in Bangladesh, are also trying in our humble way to move in that direction. The workers of GK have asked me to express their gratefulness to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for giving me the Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1985. I have come here to receive the Award on their behalf. We consider the Award to be for the collective work of GK workers, not for an individual. You will be pleased to know that the workers of Gonoshasthaya Kendra have decided in a meeting to invest the whole amount of the Award in our endeavor to bring about a change in medical education. The proposed education will not transform the medical students into businessmen; greed will not rule them. These new doctors will be the "Doctors of Health," not the "Doctors of Disease."

They will be the change agents for tomorrow's healthy, humane and sane world, where exploitation through imperialism and capitalism will not exist.

Thank you very much for helping us in our efforts for the development of a healthy society in Bangladesh. And probably the endeavors of the late President Ramon Magsaysay were in the same vein.