Environmental Clinic Argentina Headquarters (CASA)
The creation of the Environmental Clinic Argentina Headquarters (CASA), is the result of the Interinstitutional agreement between the Environmental Clinic Corporation (based in Ecuador), Médicos del Mundo Argentina, the Universidad Nacional de Rosario (UNR) and the College of Physicians of the 2nd Circumscription of the Province of Santa Fe. Within the framework of the UNR Environmental Platform, it will be coordinated by the Institute of Socio-Environmental Health (InSSA) and will have the active participation of organizations local and regional social organizations, such as “El Paraná No Se Toca”.
settlement
Platform for Environmental Studies and Sustainability Platform, UNR Center for Interdisciplinary Studies.
Director
Alejandro Vallini, Institute of Socio-Environmental Health
Vice principal
Damián Verzeñassi, Director of the Institute of Socio-Environmental Health.
Related
Helga Maria, Analía Zamorano, Verónica Möller, Germán Burguener, Gabriel Keppl,
Agostina Céspedes, Lisandro Ferrazini, Facundo Fernández, Camila Izaguirre, Anahí Sosa.
Introduction
The Environmental Clinic is a non-profit organization, created on January 13, 2015 through Official Registry No. 415. The Ministry of the Environment (MAE) of Ecuador grants legal status to the Environmental Clinical Corporation, domiciled in the city of Lago Agrio, province of Sucumbíos, Ecuador. Its scope of action is the application of socio-environmental repair policies, acting on the social fabric and the harmonious relationships between soils, plants, animals and people (Environmental Clinic Ecuador Headquarters, 2014).
The Environmental Clinic has been carrying out work coordinating activities with different organizations, with which it has built an important twinning. Among these are the Union of People Affected by Texaco's Oil Operations (UDAPT), Ecological Action, Nature with Rights, etc., which focus their activities on the protection of ecosystems, the control of environmental impact related to hydrocarbon exploitation, the reforestation of affected territories, agroecological food production by communities, construction of community health,
evaluation of the impact of extractive activities on socio-environmental health in indigenous populations, etc. (Clínica Ambiental, 2020).
Doctors of the World is an international humanitarian non-governmental organization (NGO), which is in the field of collective health, made up of health professionals, specialists in public health, epidemiology and sciences.
social. All volunteers, whose commitment to civil society is channeled by working on the health/illness/attention/care process, but also from a broader perspective of health, they work to combat all injustices. The Argentine headquarters is the only delegation in South America of the International Network Doctors of the World (Médecins du Monde), which fights for the right to health of people in more than 70 countries. Its three fundamental principles are: Direct Action, Testimonials and Social Participation.
The College of Physicians of the 2nd Circumscription of the Province of Santa Fe, created in 1951 with provincial law 3.950, among whose functions is the control of the ethical exercise of the medical profession and collaborating with public powers in the study of all health and social security problems, providing advice and technical cooperation in solving them (College of Physicians of the 2nd Circunscription of the Province of Santa Fe, 2020).
The Institute of Socio-Environmental Health (InSSA) is a space for training, exchange and discussion of ideas, actions and knowledge created on September 18, 2013, by Resolution No. 4560/2013bis in the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the Universidad Nacional de Rosario with the general objective of stimulating lines of research that contribute to generating scientific knowledge capable of strengthening the knowledge and actions of those who work daily to defend life and diversity, addressing socio-environmental complexity with a Latin American perspective and from ethics to sustainability (Ratified by Resolution CD No. 2825/2018).
Paraná No Se Toca is an organization of self-convened people who spontaneously united under the motto “for love of the river”, made up of the diversity of constituents who frequent the wetland. Drives by discontent due to use
of the territory by some companies for the production of commodities, which seek to install large-scale production methods without respecting the existing ecosystem and transforming the region, act to protect the freshwater giant and advocate for the sustainable use of the wetland.
The description and approach to the health/illness/attention/care process is not independent of who and from what position it is approached. Because of this, health workers find limitations in the theoretical foundations.
traditionally used methodologies, emerging the need to generate new approaches that allow understanding the expression of living conditions in the health/disease processes of different population groups, and understanding their determination by the most general social processes.
For this reason, community epidemiology takes on vital importance, beginning to look at health from another place, involving health professionals, but also including the plurality of voices that are part of community life. It grants communities the character of active subjects, assuming “commitment” in the social construction of health, giving democratic participation a central place, promoting commitment, contagion, and motivating transformative practices. Practices that aim to strengthen the human rights of communities within the framework of collective construction.
For years, the Paraná Delta has been considered an “in danger” region by the scientific community and international organizations, such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and is categorized as a high priority for its conservation on a regional scale (Government Secretariat of Environment and Sustainable Development of the Nation, 2019). Despite this, historical threats have deepened and accelerated due to the advance of the agro-industrial extractive system on these territories. In the context of a historic downspout of the Paraná River, generated among others by the fires in the Amazon
Brazilian in 2019, in our region more than 300.000 hectares affected by fires have been identified in 2020, with some outbreaks currently active (National Fire Management Service, 2020). Given this order of magnitude, it is evident the profound impact that they generate and will generate on the ecological balance of wetlands, on a general scale, and particularly on the health of the human populations that inhabit the region (Institute of Socio-Environmental Health – InSSA, 2020). .
Since its origins, InSSA has been strongly committed to the socio-environmental problems of our territories, understanding that it is not possible to address the health care of people in sick territories. Thus, among others
actions, has published a technical report on the impact of the fires in the Paraná Delta Wetland on human health and the book “Life in Smoke”, in relation to this problem.
The 5 International Congresses on Socio-Environmental Health allowed the members of InSSA to link up with the representatives of the Environmental Clinical Corporation (Ecuador), establishing cooperative relationships in training processes and territorial action.
Likewise, InSSA has been working together with Doctors of the World in the development of training and training courses for health workers throughout the region. For this reason, both the Environmental Clinic Corporation and Médicos del Mundo Argentina, entrust InSSA with the coordination of the Environmental Clinic Argentina Headquarters (CASA).
Objectives:
• Promote respect for collective, environmental and nature rights.
• Collectively design policies and practices for comprehensive community repair.
• Promote participatory research on socio-environmental health issues with universities and public and/or private institutions.
• Develop training processes that integrate knowledge, skills and aptitudes specific to the ecosystem that the populations inhabit, addressing in a participatory manner the problems that affect them, trying to generate joint solutions.
• Work on the comprehensive repair of the social fabric and socio-environmental aggressions from a transdisciplinary perspective.
Subproject:
Construction of the epidemiological profile of the communities that inhabit the Paraná Delta in front of the city of Rosario from participatory action research.
Objectives:
General:
• Build together with the communities that live in the Paraná Delta Islands a socio-environmental health profile, which makes it possible to generate collective approach tools for the repair of the social and territorial fabric, working on human health in connection with the territories.
Methodology
The CASA coordination committee will be in charge of InSSA, who has experience in community linkage work from the implementation of the Health Camp (CS) as a final integrative evaluation device of the Final Practice Cycle (FP) of the Medicine Degree. from UNR. This device allowed the preparation of the reported morbidity and mortality profiles of the 40 communities where it was carried out, from December 2010 to December 2019.
Access and promotion of territorial links will be carried out in conjunction with the organization El Paraná No Se Toca.
The forms of work will include participatory processes as a basis for collective construction, not only from the territorial presence, but from the articulation in planning, management, execution and constant active evolution with and for the community.
The methodology used will be Participatory Action Research (PAR) whose main premise is “research to know, know to understand and understand to transform” (Solíz & Maldonado, 2012). This consists of three moments, the diagnosis of the current situation based on concrete practice, discovering real needs; the theory, the instance on which the previously made diagnosis is based in order to analyze it; and the purposeful practice that develops a proposal to improve the initial situation diagnosed with the tool of knowledge created as a means for transformation.
The work was divided into stages:
• Practical Stage
Here we proceeded to search for the knowledge, experiences and experiences of the participants. A diagnosis of the current situation was carried out based on concrete practice, discovering real needs. The approach to the problem that is studied in this first moment is achieved through the articulation between logic and intuition, generating a dialogue between knowledge, working in community assemblies and workshops. For this the following activities will be carried out.
• Theoretical Stage:
In this instance, the previously made diagnosis is given theoretical foundation in order to analyze it. Documented research is carried out and theorized based on concrete and felt practice.
• Proposal Stage:
The objective of this stage is to prepare a proposal to improve the initial situation diagnosed based on the tools built with the knowledge developed, being a means for transformation. From this we return to practice to look for new ways of acting.
The progress of our work process, with the integration of actions and theoretical frameworks, is available in the UNR hypermedia repository, available at: https://rephip.unr.edu.ar/handle/2133/20865
Starting from the purposeful agenda constructed community-wise, and understanding the territories not only as a geographical space, but in all the complexity of the social constructions that determine the forms of organization, appropriation and forms
of living and feeling those spaces, the defense of rights is understood as a process of territorial repair that contributes to the good living of communities. In that sense, understanding health as a right, and as such a responsibility of the states, from the
CASA arises from the initiative to create a healthcare space in the territory, as an instrument to defend rights and as the first step in territorial reparation.
Thus, we began the process of building links with the formal health system as well as with institutions within the University. In this way, we find ourselves working in territory with the possibility of articulating with the Center of
Community Assistance (CEAC) dependent on UNR, and through the MOPIC Program with the UNR Faculty of Dentistry.
Bibliography
• Environmental Clinic. (12 of 12, 2020). Environmental Clinic. Obtained from http://www.clinicambiental.org/alianzas/
• Environmental Clinic Ecuador Headquarters. (19/06/2014). Statute of the Environmental Clinic. Quito, Ecuador.
• College of Physicians of the 2nd District of the Province of Santa Fe. (12 of 12, 2020). College of Physicians. Obtained from https://www.colmedicosantafe2.org.ar/
• Institute of Socio-Environmental Health – InSSA. (2020). Technical Report: Fires in the Paraná Delta Islands, Smoke and Impacts on Socio-Environmental Health. Rosario, Argentina: InSSA.
• National Fire Management Service. (2020). Fire report. Buenos Aires: Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development.
• Solíz, F., & Maldonado, A. (2012). Guide to Participatory Community Methodologies. Quito: Environmental Clinic.