[afro-nets] The right to health: more than rhetoric

[Claudio Schuftan <claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn>]

The right to health: more than rhetoric
---------------------------------------

From: "Intal - Wim De Ceukelaire" <wim.deceukelaire@intal.be>
The Lancet 2007; 369:438
DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60205-0

Editorial

The right to health: more than rhetoric

It is more than 6 years since the UN Committee on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights adopted general comment 14, that is,
the right to the highest attainable standard of health,
otherwise known as "the right to health". But what has happened
since then? Paul Hunt, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to
health outlines the progress of the health and human rights
movement in a report that he will present to the Human Rights
Council in March.

Although there have been a growing number of health and human
rights cases decided at national, regional, and international
level over the past few years, the report identifies two key
obstacles that prevent the movement from gaining momentum: the
failure of most mainstream non-governmental organisations to
include the right to health in their campaigning activities, and
the failure of most health professionals to grasp the concept of
the right to health.

Take maternal mortality, for example. More than 500,000 women
worldwide die from the complications of pregnancy every year.
Many of these deaths are avoidable and so violate women's rights
to life, to health, to equality, and to non-discrimination on a
scale that dwarfs other human rights issues, such as the death
penalty, that have attracted much attention from human-rights
non-governmental organisations.

Hunt argues that in the context of the right to health,
traditional human rights methods and techniques such as naming
and shaming, letter writing campaigns, test cases, and
sloganising are no longer enough. Instead, the right to health
should be consistently applied across all national and
international policymaking processes by using a system of health
indicators and benchmarks, such as access to health care, to
measure the practical implications of the right to health.

Unless greater numbers of well-positioned health professionals
understand and support such endeavours, there is little chance
of putting the right to health into practice. Health
professionals must begin to appreciate that the right to the
highest attainable standard of health is more than rhetoric. It
is a tool they can use to save lives and reduce suffering.

The Lancet