Be-cause health is the global health platform that connects organisations and experts in Belgium and internationally, and stimulates collaboration.
At Be‑cause health, we believe that health is a right for everyone. This conviction guides everything we do: from strengthening local health systems to bringing together knowledge, practice and policy.
Be-cause health members strive for the right to health and healthcare for all by providing equitable access to high quality, responsive health services for all, particularly the most vulnerable people, supported by strong, resilient, and sustainable health systems.
Be-cause health advocates a more equitable global health policy, based on the right to health for all, and recognises health as a complex and adaptive system.
Based on a rights-based approach to health and health care, Be-cause health values a constructive dialogue in an open and learning stimulating mindset, guided by creativity, innovation, equity, justice, inclusivity, autonomy, solidarity, and ownership.
Members, whether individuals or organisations, non- or for-profit, are not to use the Be-cause health network to pursue commercial self-serving interests.
As an open and pluralistic network, Be-cause health welcomes both organisations and individuals committed to global health.
This dynamism is underpinned by a light and flexible structure and an operating model that adapts to opportunities and constant changes within the complex, pluralistic and multi-stakeholder context of global health, as well as to the expectations and engagement of its members. The platform’s dynamism depends on the initiative of its members, who are granted the necessary autonomy. Be-cause health is an open platform that actively seeks synergies and collaborations with other networks at Belgian and international level, also outside the health sector.
Be-cause health members share an approach that recognizes health as a right for all and that health systems strengthening is crucial. This vision is expressd in the Health Care for All-declaration from 2001, elaborated during the Health Care for All conference, organised by the the Belgian Development Cooperation and the Institute of Tropical Medicine, and ratified by more than 20 Public Health Ministers. The basics of this declaration remain topical until today.