Health Vs Wealth

HADI Foundation puts health above economic gain

By Jin Paul de Guzman

When Dr. Iwan Soetjahja, former adviser of the World Health Organization-Western Pacific Region, was assigned to the island-nation of Kiribati, he noticed something: despite the fact that the nation was not industrialized and didn't have the latest in technology, it was peaceful, healthy, and-more importantly-happy.

    He contrasted the Kiribati way of life with that of his home country Indonesia, which, while not as highly developed as it is now, was more economically developed and had more technological resources than the island-state. More importantly, he noticed that Indonesia was going through major problems.

    So he asked himself: if indeed economic development makes people's lives better, why is it that despite economic development people continue to be unhappy and destroy one another? He noticed that even the richest countries of the world experience this.

    And it occurred to him: something must be wrong with the economic system. "The use of the current economic system," he said, "for maximal profit and as an objective to all activities in life, and as an indicator for the assessment of progress, automatically stimulates people and nations to gain maximum wealth aggressively."

    This turns people selfish and greedy, he explained, and creates the problems the world is going through-"poverty due to unfair distribution of wealth, violence and wars caused by aggressive competition, survival insecurity, and destruction of the living environment for…profitable industrial protection."

    So he thought, we need a shift in focus, from economics to something. But what is that "something?" Being a doctor, he thought of health-he explained that unlike the "capitalist economic system," whose benefits have a downside, "health is always good." A well-developed world, in his vision, may not necessarily be an industrialized world, but is necessarily a healthy world. And the way he views health is through the United Nations definition: not merely as the absence of disease, but a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being.

    After retiring from the WHO and settling in Manila, he started work to achieve his vision. At first he started a business that essentially functioned as a health care delivery service. But unlike the average health care service provider, they returned to the old practice of doctors personally visiting their patients. This was especially good for the elderly patients, who found the practice of having to travel to see their doctors inconvenient. The business helped fund the Health All Development International (HADI) Foundation, which involved itself in community service and health education efforts.

    The activities of the HADI Foundation have three important components-the biomedical, educational, and administrative aspects. Dr. Soetjahja explained: "The biomedical aspect determines what should be done, the educational component explains why it should be done, and the administrative component shows how it should be done." Unlike what is usually done, the foundation implements these activities together, and regularly. In general, the system they base these activities in is called "health development system."

    What is it exactly does the foundation do? They implement "community self-reliance projects"-these involve the care of the elderly and the provision of affordable health care services, among others. Their public education projects focus not only on providing health information, but on how the information may be used in people's lives.

    Already the foundation carries out regular medical missions in four barangays in Makati and some rural areas in Indonesia. In the future Dr. Soetjahja hopes to expand their activities in other parts of the Philippines, Indonesia, and even the rest of the world.

    Dr. Soetjahja recognizes that it will take a lot of hard work to achieve their goals. But with people slowly realizing that health is a much more significant aspect of life than the pursuit of economic well-being, and that people in the barangay level starting to adopt the focus on health, he believes achieving the goals may actually happen sooner.