Historic Participation of Wizo in Health Care Conference in the USSR

Raya Jaglom, president of the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO), reported at the meeting here last week of the biannual meeting of the World Conference on Soviet Jewry about the historic participation of WIZO in the Primary Health Care Conference organized by the United Nations and the Soviet government which was held Sept. 6-15 in Alma Ata. WIZO is accredited to the UN as a non-governmental organization and is the only Zionist organization with headquarters in Israel.

Mrs. Jaglom said that Evelyn Sommer, WIZO’s representative at the UN in New York, represented the organization at the conference in the USSR and presented a statement on its behalf calling on the non-governmental community to commit its energies to meet the final report of the International Conference on Primary Health which called for the development of comprehensive national health care systems and services.

After attending the conference in Alma Ata, Mrs. Sommer met with Jews and refusniks in that city and in Tashkent, Leningrad and Moscow. She said afterwards that she was overwhelmed by their hope, faith and gallantry “unprecedented in the annals of our generation. We must involve thousands of people of good will in our struggle to free the Jews of the Soviet Union. We must continue to stress the priorities of our struggle: insist on the release of the prisoners who have been sentenced to jail or harsh labor camps; fight for the right of every Jew to receive a visa to Israel.”

The Jewish refusniks, Mrs. Sommer added, “living day after day with the threat of harassment, arrest, trials, deserve all our support, encouragement and solidarity to enable them to live their lives in freedom, as Jews, after the long ordeal to which they are being subjected.”