My impression of the WHO conference in Magdeburg, Germany

At the end of November, the international conference "New partners for health - health on the way into the 21 st century" took place in Magdeburg, a follow-up conference of the Jakarta and Ottawa conferences. These conferences had demanded what should be absolutely self-evident health for everyone, sufficient food, water, social security, housing, etc. Today, we are further away from these commendable goals than ever before. 100 000 people die of starvation every day, while here, people are trying to overcome obesity by using diet pills. I had been invited to report on my self-help project for Bansko in Bulgaria, the most important mile- My impression of the WHO conference in Magdeburg, Germany stone of which consists in at least taking a first step towards vegetarianism. 420 representatives from the health administration sector mainly of Eastern European countries participated in this conference. I was once again surprised at the fact that very few of them even accepted the idea of vegetarianism. My offer to provide basic information on vegetarian whole food to interested participants, particularly from Eastern European countries, free of charge as in Bulgaria, met with no reaction whatsoever. Well, we will not stop planting the seeds, even if the world were to end tomorrow. However, I am all the more looking forward to the European Vegetarian Congress in Wid nau/Switzerland in July and to meeting the many people who share my convictions. Barbara Rütting, Dec. 5, 1998 © European Vegetarian Union - http://www.ivu.org/evu