Welcome from SARILAYA – participants & res persons

Dear Participants and Resource Persons,

Welcome to the Holistic Health: Exploring Integrative Healthcare Anew online conference.

SARILAYA is a 20-year old women’s organization committed to promote women’s empowerment and gender equality. With 500 members all over the Philippines, the organization recently decided to focus on health and related environmental issues. Particularly, SARILAYA members share the vision of advancing community-managed health programs, fulfilling the principle of “health in the hands of the people,” with a stronger emphasis on nutrition-based preventive healthcare.

Thirty-five years after the Alma Ata Declaration during the International Conference on Primary Healthcare in the USSR, the prioritization of government is seen elsewhere – immunization and vaccination packages, health facility enhancement and health insurance. While they are important in managing diseases at curative stages, emphasizing on primary healthcare ensures the prevention of diseases, which makes it more cost-effective both for the people and the government.

SARILAYA believes in achieving holistic health based on the context of the people in their communities. Holistic health addresses prevention, promotion, curative and the rehabilitative needs of all especially the most vulnerable (e.g. people with disabilities, women and children/youth, indigenous peoples) depending on their situation. It also gives equal importance to responding to the underlying determinants of health (i.e. food and nutrition, water and sanitation, working conditions, environmental conditions, etc.).

One way for government to focus on holistic health with equitable emphasis given to prevention and primary healthcare is to advance the integrative healthcare framework into a policy. Contrary to majority belief, Integrative healthcare is not simply about the complementation of the east and west, alternative and biomedical methods to healthcare. Rather, it is a consciousness that highlights the people’s right to self-determination which is evident when they chart their own health programs according to their context, deciding on the quality services most accessible to them. When it becomes a policy, government prioritizes and allocates funds for it.

Therefore, to start the ball rolling, health advocates and partners in the movement through the venue that SARILAYA is providing will be revisiting the integrative healthcare framework (IHF), discuss potential campaigns on advancing it and explore the possibilities of sustaining the programs and campaigns.

One of the venues is through this eConference.

We do hope that participants will have the time to provide inputs, reply and participate in the exchanges.

Inputs from this online conference shall be integrated to the framework paper currently being prepared by SARILAYA for its Integrative Healthcare Forum soon. The eConference will also serve as the preparatory activity for the gathering and an opportunity to spread the word to those who might be interested to participate and contribute.

Again, welcome to everyone.