Health hazard
Public health is under siege almost everywhere. Richard Swift diagnoses the cause and suggests a cure.

Is your job killing you?
Surprising ways in which work can damage your health.

AIDS heretic
Paul Farmer comes to the defence of the beleaguered President of South Africa and weighs up his controversial views on the continent’s frightening pandemic.

At debt’s door
Sri Lanka’s paddy farmers are using ‘magic bullet’ pesticides on themselves. Lasanda Kurukulasuriya finds out why.

Stressful transition
The cost of Hungary’s new capitalism is being borne by those who can’t adjust to the pace of change. Paul N Casgoly fears for the country’s future.

It’s your lifestyle, stupid...
Can we choose to be healthy?
Illustrations by David Rolfe.

Elusive promise
Veteran health activist David Werner relates how a counter-revolution has ambushed primary healthcare in the countries of the South.

HEALTH – THE FACTS

Asleep at the switch
The deregulators are trading lives for investment opportunities. Ulli Diemer won’t let them get away with it quietly.

Peddling dangerous dreams
Albena Arnaudova reports on how the tobacco company web is trapping
a new generation of smokers in Eastern Europe.

A History of Public Health

Trust me, I’m a doctor
Trevor Turner takes an irreverent look at what the medical profession can and can’t do for you.

Destination gridlock
The roads lobby doesn’t want us to consider the alternatives. But Stephanie Boyd ferrets one out in downtown Lima anyway.

Health is something we don’t think too much about, until it deserts us. Then we immediately think about how to put things right – and that usually involves a visit to the doctor. But health actually has little to do with the health system of which doctors are a part and which only steps in when something is already wrong. If we do think about our health before we reach that point, it is usually in the form of a nagging sense that we really should quit smoking or get more exercise. We just assume that if we live right we will be the captains of our own fate – especially in these New Age days of the holistic, alternative, organic, naturopathic and complementary.

But can we be? When you delve into a subject things that seemed obvious sometimes dissolve before your eyes, while others that you’d only vaguely thought about become crystal clear. So it was for me with the degree to which we get to choose a healthy lifestyle. When you examine the deeper reasons why some people are more prone to illness than others, they have a very familiar ring for NI readers: inequality, poverty, pollution, type of job and a system that values money too much and people too little. Our real choices are often frighteningly narrow. A good deal of important energy has gone into fighting to maintain an accessible system of medical care; not enough energy into fighting against those things that create illness in the first place. This is where we need to begin – and it is the starting point of this issue of the NI.

Richard Swift
for the New Internationalist Co-operative
rswift@newint.org