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A ‘greenprint’ for survival in 2020

MEDACT — Medical Action for Global Security — is commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of VE day by developing a strategy to help achieve global peace and justice by the year 2020.

The organisation, which is a voluntary association of doctors and other health professionals concerned about nuclear proliferation, war, famine and other global health issues, has set to work to produce a ‘greenprint’ of key targets which need to be reached to make global security a reality over the next 25 years.

The plan was initiated by working groups at the annual MEDACT conference on 29 April and will be launched on 6 August, the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima.

Dr June Crown, president of MEDACT and president-elect of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine, said: ‘We all know that it is better to avert war than to treat the wounds, better by far to control environmental pollution and malnutrition than to deal with the long term consequences.

‘We are working towards preventive medicine on a global scale.’

The organisation has well developed international links and a strong track record of campaigning on issues of global health. It is an affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, and is an ‘implementing partner’ in the psychosocial programme of UNICEF, working with children traumatised by the war in the former Yugoslavia.

In addition, MEDACT is currently collaborating with the Association of Medical Workers for Health and Environmental Concerns, a counterpart organisation in Uganda, on a study of the impact of third world debt on health.

Currently, membership of MEDACT stands at over 2,000, of whom forty per cent are doctors. Dr Crown is hoping for a substantial increase in membership by the end of this year.

MEDACT, 601 Holloway Road, London N19 4DJ. 0171-272 2020.