The First Children’s Forum, 2000: Participating in Health
A group of children express their views on the health care system to a reporter from national television programme, Bass String, Ankara, 2000.
Photograph © UNICEF Turkey 2000
Problems with health
With our friends in the Children’s Forum group study on health we sought answers to the questions:
- Are we happy with health services?
- To what extent are we able to access health services?
- Do we get attention when we’re ill?
The group focused particularly on free health care services for children, environmental health, and inadequacy of health care services in both urban and rural regions of the East.
Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 6:
Every child has the inherent right to life, and the State has an obligation to ensure the child’s survival and development.
We want to see the establishment of children’s hospitals to serve us in cities with a certain population.
Action for health
What should be done?
Laws preventing children from forming (health related) associations should be abolished.
How should this be done?
Support of authorised organs and politicians should be sought for children to exercise their participatory right.
Who should do this?
The Turkish Grand National Assembly
When should this be done?
Until 23 April 2001
What should be done?
The public should be informed about children’s rights to help ensure that children can exercise their right to participate.
How should this be done?
Coordinated action by relevant public agencies and institutions and non-governmental organisations should be ensured.
Who should do this?
SHÇEK, MOH, MONE, Administration for the Disabled, Ministry of Internal Affairs, UNICEF, all national and international NGOs.
When should this be done?
Must be started immediately and should be continuous.
What should be done?
All public agencies and institutions should be equipped to offer free, adequate and qualified health services based on the equal opportunity principle.
How should this be done?
Relevant agencies should be encouraged through the use of our participatory rights to pass required new laws. Awareness of patients’ rights should be raised; children should have the right to choose a health care facility and doctor, and to be informed about health problems. Dedicated children’s hospitals should be established in cities of a certain population. Children’s wings with play and education rooms, should be set up in all hospitals of public agencies and institutions. Maternal-child health centres should be expanded and the quality of services improved. Adequate protection, sheltering, and health care services should be provided free of charge to homeless and substance-abusing children. Effective work should be done to develop family medicine and to provide preventive health care services.
Who should do this?
When should this be done?
Activities should be started immediately.
What should be done?
On the environment:
- Prevention of environmental pollution -- environmentally correct behavior should be ensured.
- Safety and hygiene of foodstuffs must be ensured.
- Effective action to prevent communicable diseases must be maintained; attention should be given to inoculation.
How should this be done?
Anything threatening the environment and human health should be disallowed; adequate, clean drinking water should be supplied.
More space should be reserved for sports activities.
Enforcement of existing environmental health laws and the enactment and supervision of new laws should be ensured.
Products for children should be monitored to ensure that they are healthy and hygienic.
Environmentally safe manufacture and utilisation of agricultural chemicals should be ensured.
Haphazard use of drugs should be prevented through public education (restriction of over-the-counter sale of prescription drugs)
Publications/broadcasts should be produced to make the public aware of household accidents and how to prevent them.
Who should do this?
Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Internal Affairs, MOH, Ministry of Agriculture, municipalities, Ministry of Industry, NGOs
When should this be done?
Activities should be started immediately, to be completed by November 2000.
What should be done?
Greater focus should be placed on education in order to expand awareness.
How should this be done?
The mass media should be utilised.
Having at least two annual health check-ups should be encouraged.
Early and consanguineous marriages should be discouraged and prevented.
Patients’ rights and sex education should be expanded; information should be made more accessible.
Student health commissions at schools should become fully operational.
Who should do this?
When should this be done?
Should be started immediately and continued without interruption
Opinion on health
Dönüş, from Burdur
I think our country’s greatest problem is health. As you know, with scandal of smuggled, uninspected buffalo meat and such going around, I don’t think human health is considered to be important. When you’re buying meat, you might stop and wonder Should I buy this or not? Is it healthy?
Many buy without thinking, but how are you to trust butchers and suchlike when you have uninspected buffalo meat going around? I think a lot of responsibility falls on the Ministry of Health.
Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 24:
The child has a right to the highest standard of health and medical care attainable. The State shall strive to see that no child is deprived of access to effective health care services.
Eren, from Mersin
Everyone of us here thinks about their own health but what about those who eat out of trash cans in the street? I want to know, why doesn’t anyone see them? There are so many people in Turkey who eat out of trash cans, and no one mentions the matter of their health, I mean everyone’s talking about themselves.
Yasin, from Ankara
There are two things I have to say about health. This is something seen most of the time in İstanbul; children collect pills from dump sites, they collect drugs, and they eat food. I think it would be better if steps were taken against these dump sites and the trash in our environment.
Salih, from Siirt
I want to mention a matter that everyone sees but does nothing about. There are no health care services in Siirt, or in the Eastern and Southeastern provinces in general. They exist only in provincial centres; there aren’t any in districts and villages. If someone in a village gets sick, he or she can only go to the centre three times in any given week. If you get sick outside those 3 days, you can’t go because the roads are closed. I want adequate health care services to be delivered to the provinces and administrative districts.
Belkis, from Ordu
I’m in the situation that when I get sick, I have to ask myself the question Should I go to the doctor or not?
What if I go and completely endanger my life? We see on television, someone has surgery, and something gets left inside their body. It’s very easy to be negligent of a person’s life, but it can be very hard to make that person better when something like that happens.
Ayşe, from Niğde
If I were to have a traffic accident today, believe me I would have no hope of surviving -- ambulances arrive late and patients get transferred to the other side of town for no good reason.
Continue to the next section Participating in Legislation.
Previous page
|
Next page
Skip to the page footer menu or select an item from this list ▼
THE FIRST CHILDREN’S FORUM -- NOVEMBER 2000
This fully illustrated report from The First Children’s Forum, 2000 is also available for download in pdf format. [PDF 417KB]
* How to use RSS …