Abstract
In doing a special issue on the right to health, The Lancet is helping to draw attention to an extraordinarily important subject that does not get as much attention as it deserves. There are understandable reasons why the perspective of the right to health seems to many to be remote. First, there is what we might call the legal question: how can health be a right since there is no binding legislation demanding just that? Second, there is the feasibility question: how can the state of being in good health be a right, when there is no way of ensuring that everyone does have good health? Third, there is the policy question: why think of health, rather than health care, as a right, since health care is under the control of policy making, not the actual state of health of the people? The right to health: from rhetoric to realityHuman Rights Day on Dec 10 marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). A year ago, in the run up to this important milestone, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched a campaign that aimed to increase knowledge and awareness of human rights. During the course of the year, many governments and educational, cultural, and human rights institutions have reaffirmed their commitment to the values and principles of the UDHR. The health sector has been strikingly silent, which is tremendously disappointing given that the foundation for the right to health is laid out in this historic document. Full-Text PDF Health systems and the right to health: an assessment of 194 countries60 years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights laid the foundations for the right to the highest attainable standard of health. This right is central to the creation of equitable health systems. We identify some of the right-to-health features of health systems, such as a comprehensive national health plan, and propose 72 indicators that reflect some of these features. We collect globally processed data on these indicators for 194 countries and national data for Ecuador, Mozambique, Peru, Romania, and Sweden. Full-Text PDF
Highlights
There is what we might call the legal question: how can health be a right since there is no binding legislation demanding just that? Second, there is the feasibility question: how can the state of being in good health be a right, when there is no way of ensuring that everyone does have good health? Third, there is the policy question: why think of health, rather than health care, as a right, since health care is under the control of policy making, not the actual state of health of the people?
The legal question assumes that the idea of right has to be inescapably legal
In seeing health as a human right, there is a call to action to advance people’s health in the same way that the 18th-century activists fought for freedom and liberty
Summary
Why and how is health a human right?
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