Among equals for health care: Canadian Health Coalition celebrates collaboration with Inter Pares

On Friday, Dec. 5, friends of Inter Pares over the years gathered to celebrate the work done and networks built since the organization was founded in 1975 around Ian Smillie’s kitchen table on MacLaren Street in downtown Ottawa.

Inter Pares means “among equals” in Latin.

The Canadian Health Coalition has long been what Inter Pares calls a “counterpart,” an organization with which Inter Pares works closely and shares knowledge and resources.

Jason MacLean, Chair of the Canadian Health Coalition, celebrated this collaboration recognizing the important contribution Inter Pares makes to health equity and justice. 

Congrats Inter Pares on your 50th anniversary! The Canadian Health Coalition is honoured to collaborate with the brilliant Inter Pares staff on global health equity and justice. We especially want to thank Rita Morbia who has served on our board as our co-treasurer. This past year alone, Inter Pares has invited us to co-host events with their inspiring global partners including health care leaders from Burma as they studied Canada’s public health care system, and youth activists championing sexual and reproductive health rights in Bangladesh, the Philippines and El Salvador. Thank you Inter Pares for widening our health justice horizons.

Jason MacLean, Chair of the Canadian Health Coalition

In September, the Canadian Health Coalition’s Tracy Glynn welcomed a delegation of Burmese doctors and health care leaders to Fredericton. The delegates are at the forefront of building their country’s health care system and are keen to learn about the challenges and triumphs confronting medicare in Canada. A 2021 military coup and long-standing civil war has devastated Burma’s health care system.

Tracy fielded many questions about reproductive health care access and Linda Silas, president of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions, joined the delegation online from Ottawa to talk about pharmacare and other health care issues. The delegates then spent the afternoon with New Brunswick Health Minister Dr. John Dornan and other health department officials and information was exchanged about health care systems in both countries.

A special moment during the Fredericton stop was when Dr. Adrian Edgar, whose Clinic 554 won the 2019 Inter Pares’ Peter Gillespie Social Justice Award, was able to tell one of the delegates, Dr. Cynthia Maung, that she was the reason he became a doctor. Before he became a doctor, Dr. Edgar had volunteered at Dr. Maung’s Mae Tao Clinic for four months in 2005. The Mae Tao Clinic has been providing essential health care services and support to vulnerable and displaced populations from Burma along the Thai-Burma border since 1989. Dr. Edgar called the experience transformative and life changing.

The delegation then moved on to PEI where they met with Mary Boyd and the PEI Health Coalition.

 “Coalition work is the beating heart of Inter Pares”

Inter Pares is an active member of the Canadian Health Coalition. Rita Morbia, Program Manager at Inter Pares, is also the co-chair of the Coalition’s Finance Committee, bringing not only a feminist analysis of health care issues but great knowledge and good humour to this very important task.

“Coalition work is the beating heart of Inter Pares. It’s a powerful way to amplify and connect seemingly disparate voices to reach feminist objectives,” she says.

At Inter Pares, Rita works on issues related to women’s rights, feminist movement-building, and health, including sexual and reproductive rights, in Canada, Africa and Asia. Before joining Inter Pares, she was a teacher in rural Swaziland and worked in the environmental movement.

Inter Pares was started to build a more just and equal world differently. Disenchanted with colonial frameworks of international development, the founders envisioned an organization rooted in solidarity and not charity as an approach to international cooperation. The goal is to address the root causes of social injustice guided by the knowledge and practices of communities connecting the Global South and the Global North.