A manifesto for planetary health

Richard Horton and colleagues’ manifesto is in the tradition of The Lancet’s founding Editor Thomas Wakley. It champions social medicine, as does The Lancet’s current Editor.2

We—as members of the People’s Health Movement also aiming to strengthen community and planetary health informed by public health principles—agree with and endorse the general analysis of The Lancet’s manifesto. However, the manifesto makes no mention of existing social movements, many of which have much the same aims as those being proposed, including: exposing political and economic systems that jeopardise public health, emphasising the provision of universal primary health care, insisting that public health institutions and facilities be protected, empowering the people most immediately affected and defending their rights, calling for renewed social values and a vision that puts the public interest first, and pressing governments to protect public goods