Vancouver worst

Health report shockin

By ALD. HARRY RANKIN

“Vancouver does not need
forever to claim all the honors as
Canada’s suicide capital, rocky
liver capital, tooth rot capital and
abortion capital.”

This is the concluding sentence
of a report on health problems in
Vancouver by G. H. Bonham,
NCD) F_R-G.P.7AAG). the city’s
medical health officer. The facts in
this report are shocking. The time
for remedial action by city council
is already long overdue.

“Vancouver children do not have
good teeth,’’ says Dr. Bonham. The
reason? ‘‘Anti-fluoridationists
have successfully intimidated
three successive provincial
governments into retaining the
most obstructive legislation in
North America. We have the teeth
to prove it. We talk about
prevention and training doctors
and dentists. We build hospitals

City Communists meet

Meeting in Vancouver last
Sunday, the Vancouver convention
of the Communist Party called on
the voters of Vancouver East to
reject the candidates of the
Socreds and other big business
parties in the June 3 byelection.

The resolution on the byelection
condemned the Socred government
for its 40 per cent increase in the
sales tax and for other measures
designed to reduce the living
standards of the people. It urged
NDP leader Dave Barrett and all
NDP members of the legislature to
withdraw their support of Socred
Bill 16, a bill designed to give the
Trudeau government a free hand
in controlling wages in B.C.

The 46 delegates from 11 city
clubs heard a comprehensive
report from the outgoing City
Committee expressing confidence
that the next year will bring
significant party growth in Van-
couver.

The report examined the
relationships in Vancouver civic
politics in some detail, pointing to
the disintegration of TEAM and the
indications that powerful business
interests are lining up behind the
Non-Partisan Association as an
alternative. It also examined the
question of what needs to be done
in the creation of a democratic,

reform alternative that would
unite progressive elements in civic
politics with the labor movement.

The relationships within the
trade union movement came in for
some discussion, particularly in
connection with the increasing
resistance on a national scale to
the Trudeau wage controls. Party
activity in the past year was
examined and confidence was
expressed that the next year will
bring significant party growth in
Vancouver.

Delegates pledged full support to
the campaign to collect signatures
for the Stockholm peace petition.

The positive role of the Pacific
Tribune was mentioned in the main
report and by a number of
delegates in the discussion. Full
support was pledged to the paper’s
current financial drive. In ad-
dition, delegates discussed a plan
to distribute 1,000 copies a week to
selected groups of industrial
workers.

Nigel-Morgan, provincial leader
of the party, brought greetings
from the party’s executive, urging
a stepped-up fight against the
Trudeau wage controls and against
the policies of the Socreds in
Victoria designed to increase taxes
on working people and to cut back
on services, while at the same time

lowering taxes on the resource
industries controlled by multi-
national corporations.

Mike Gidora, PT circulation and
business manager, addressed the
convention and reported on the
wide support the paper is receiving
in its current financial drive.

and schools of ‘medicine and
dentistry, and we listen to hot-
liners and to anti-fluoridationists
and we have rotten teeth.
“Vancouver has the highest
abortion rate in Canada,”’ says Dr.
Bonham, adding that some women
use abortion as birth control. Yet

the provincial government is.

cutting the $90,000 budget for Pine
Clinic to $75,000. This is the clinic
where one-third of its function is
birth control, one-third is venereal
disease, and one-third general
medical care for young people.
‘Pine Clinic-serves an important
preventive function,’’ says Dr.
Bonham, ‘‘and it makes me angry
to hear all this talk of prevention
with no money to convince me of
any sincerity.’’ Dr. Bonham asks
that ‘‘we support birth control for
young people on public health, not
necessarily religious grounds. |
“Alcohol abuse is revealed by
what we see, what we hear and by
our doubled death rate for
cirrhosis of the liver,” says Dr.
Bonham in his report.
Vancouver’s proportion of low
birth weight babies is ‘‘un-
necessarily high,” he declares.
“two-thirds of infant deaths and
disability are found in this low
birth rate weight group... An
unknown number of milder forms
of brain damage .and learning
disability are associated with
_prematurity. The answer lies in

building the health of preg
women.” ;
He points out that
nutritional status of pregiy
women is common, that 1)
reversible and that when ®
cessfully corrected it results
larger healthier baby.’’ The co5)
nutritional intervention is only)
per baby. Yet a major Vancol}
project in Vancouver which)
successfully applied this appr
is not again being funded. _
Canada’s (and Vancouvél,
perinatal mortality is |
proximately twice the known 10)
attainable level. The evid)
shows that the higher the peril
mortality, the higher the num
of surviving damaged infants.)
Dr. Bonham is convinced ¥
the solution for a situation w"
our “fundamental hea
measurements do not comp)
favorably with other areas’”’ lié
preventive action. 4
‘“‘What is needed,’’ he 4
phasizes, “is a commitment!)
health, not to disease; |
prevention not to a preoccup®
with cure. . . three cents out 0)
health dollar for disease coll)
and prevention will never)
sufficient.” t
Dr. Bonham is_ justifi
alarmed. Unfortunately his
cern is not shared to the %
extent by either the mee
See RANKIN, pg. 12

Bi |

Cunhal greets election results

LISBON — Alvaro Cunhal said
April 26 that the results of the
national elections were favorable
for the left forces of Portugal.
Cunhal, - general secretary of the
Portuguese Communist Party,
said the results show that the
Portuguese people voted against
reaction and for unity of the left
forces.

All analysts were astounded by
the good showing of the PCP
against incredible odds: the PCP
won 14.7 per cent of the vote. This
was up from 12.5 per cent it had
won in last year’s Constituent
Assembly elections.

What made the PCP gain so
remarkable was’ the fact that in
some areas of Portugal, such as

* the Azores and Madeira, as well as

several large areas in the north of
mainland Portugal, the party had
been compelled to work under

year 2000 but what is happening today . . . now. Then the
prospects might be infinitely better in the year 2000.
In the capitalist countries and in those following their’

the PCP.

practically underground %
ditions. Any PCP member *

came out in the open in these a!)
was risking his life because of 4
fascist and reactionary terror)

The Socialist Party of ™
Soares was dealt a hard setba)
the national elections. The SP!
aimed at increasing its vote
the 37 per cent it got in last y¥%
Constituent Assembly electiol|
42 per cent in these election)
fact, it got only 35.04 per cent)

Soares had been aiming at #7)
cent so that the SP could set
cabinet of its own. As the r@
came in he said “‘the SP
enter an alliance with eithel)
Communist Party or parties dl!
right.’’ But the results are like!)
strengthen those in the SP |
want an alliance with Cunha!’

until the year 2000 to do something about all of the ab ,
or should these vital problems get an airing now? »|
say this Conference on Human Settlements should be")

n the year 2000, how and where will the earth’s six or

seven billion people live? That and similar questions
are posed by Paul Hellyer in a recent press release. As
might be expected, this notorious Tory reactionary
provides no answers, either to the world delegations who
will make up the Habitat conference or anyone else.
Hellyer and his breed have no solutions because they are
part of the problem.

In her book, The Home of Man, Barbara Ward, noted
British economist, writer and women of ideas, has posed
many vital questions of man’s survival — and offered a
number of answers. Few of them were complimentary to
the political pundits of this age who counter their arms
build up to the things that are essential to man’s survival.
A livable environment, housing, the right of a job, human
health: are these to be commodities for the market place
or a right of all people? ;

We cannot begin to cite all that Barbara Ward has said
in her book or in her many lectures. Suffice it to say that
what she portrays heralds disaster for mankind unless
and until the madmen who make up our modern
Establishment are taken away from the steering wheel of
history and our direction is reappraised.

Perhaps Habitat, which opens its 12-day conference in
Vancouver May 31 will open the way to such a reap-

praisal; not to discuss what may happen to mankind in the

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MAY 7, 1976—Page 2

lead, whether by preference or coercion, there are at least
20 million unemployed, all of them denied the elementary
right to earn a livelihood. There are more millions con-
demned to live out their days in profit-making slums and
cardboard shelters, with millions more living ‘‘under the
stars,’’ robbed of their homes, their lands and their
national heritage. Millions in the lands of the Middle East,
Asia, Africa and Latin America. Even in our own Canada,
we hesitate to face up to such a reality.

Without exaggeration, these untold millions are faced
with partial or complete starvation. While the richer
nations have an abundance of food, that, too, has been
turned into a weapon or war, a weapon to bring the hungry
to heel. To speak of such conditions having any connection
whatsoever with “the dignity of man’’ is to blaspheme all
that man holds sacred. It is an empty phrase in the
vocabulary of the Establishment.

The pollution of the environment is a much kicked-

around topic but, in the main, the discussion is
meaningless. We recognize the poisoning of our waters

(some of us), our lands, our atmosphere. But a huge
’ military-industrial complex pollutes everything it touches »

and the contamination goes on apace.

Many of our great rivers and lakes are today little
better than gigantic sewers into which we dump every
known and some unknown chemicals. We dump our
mineral tailings, our tons of waste. We listen to fulsome
speeches by our politicians about the poisoning and accept
the specious excuses for continuing the dumping.

Should Habitat and its world-wide participants wait

political; a get-together to discuss abstractions or Hh}
instruct the poorer nations in the niceties of afl}
living. They insult the delegations from the us
Nations with their suggestions.

We contemplate a later column which will asses*
stupidities colored with racism of our ‘“‘city father’
his TEAM-NPA entourage at city hall, the provoe
coverage given by the media to possible acts of vi
the reneging by various governments on pled!
financial aid to Habitat and last, but not least, th'
arming” of our police as a welcoming gesture
conference. :

Instead of welcoming Habitat and its world spon:
Vancouver, these people have acted like a communi
boors. Perhaps it’s because the conference will 7
much to tell them about human settlement which’
don’t want to hear.

‘

PACIFIC

| 4%

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