Theme: Social movements for Health Equity
Experiences and narratives of grievance redressal for patient rights violations in Karnataka, India

Background: Keeping health equity as the guiding principle, social movements for health across the globe strive for justice and upholding the health (care) rights of individuals and communities. Social movements for health challenge inequitable health policies, structures of authority, unjust research, and health care practices. They are an important political force driving social change. Meena Putturaj along with others in their recent paper published in BMJ Global Health captures the many struggles of one collective grassroot movement to secure justice for aggrieved health care seeking individuals through the formal grievance redressal system in Karnataka, India.

Format: In the 19th HENI Equilogues, Meena Putturaj will be joined by Mr. Shivaputrappa D Malladada, a representative from the Community-based organization (CBO) that supported the collective of aggrieved care-seeking individuals in a subdistrict in Karnataka. Meena will present an overview of her paper entitled Crying Baby Gets the Milk?: The Governmentality of Grievance Redressal for Patient Rights Violations in Karnataka, India. Following this, she will steer a conversation with Mr. Shivaputrappa around the aggrieved community’s struggles and strategies to seek justice with the formal grievance redressal system for a case of alleged patient rights violations reported in a public health facility in Karnataka. They will also deliberate on the way forward for social movements at times of shrinking civil space in democratic countries.

Speakers
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