This article reports Zambia's First Lady, Dr Christine Kaseba-Sata, calling for an end to discrimination against sexual minorities. Speaking at a UNAIDS hosted reception, she said that the "silence around issues of Men who have Sex with Men should be stopped and no one should be discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation. Rather, we should address reproductive health issues around this issue." She went further to assure people working in the sexual and reproductive health sector of her and the president's support.
Values, Policies and Rights
Miracles Do Happen in Zambia
Lee R: Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa: 6 November 2013
Right to Food seminar presentations
Section 27: November 2013
SECTION27 hosted a Right to Food seminar on the 4th of November. This afforded the organisation and other stakeholders the opportunity to form a strategy to ensure the realisation of this critical but legislatively and judicially undefined right. The presentations given during the seminar can be accessed on the site. Attendees came from numerous organisations such as Action Aid, New Women’s Movement, COPAC, the Treatment Action Campaign, Foundation for Human Rights, Lawyers for Human Rights and Wits university.
Universal health coverage: Beyond rhetoric
Sengupta A: Municipal Services Project Occasional Paper, November 2013
This paper raises critical questions around the wide and growing enthusiasm for Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Typically defined as a health financing system based on pooling of funds to provide health coverage for a country’s entire population, it often takes the form of a ‘basic package’ of services made available through health insurance and provided by a growing private sector. Such programs are now zealously promoted by global health agencies, yet the evidence to support their implementation remains extremely thin. The paper argues that re-imagining public health care – rather than the private sellout of health systems via UHC – is the only way forward in building truly universal health outcomes.
Draft Framework Convention on Global Health
The Joint Action and Learning Initiative on National and Global Responsibilities for Health, October 2013
Following consultation by the Joint Action and Learning Initiative on National and Global Responsibilities for Health on the FCGH in Geneva in May 2013, JALI and several partners who participated in the consultation developed a draft Framework for an FCGH. This is aimed at providing greater clarity on the principles and core content of the FCGH, building on the FCGH Manifesto. In the hopes of forging a broad consensus around this document, JALI is circulating the draft and calling for feedback on the Framework to improve it and ensure that it represents a shared vision. The Framework will then serve as a platform for a Campaign for an FCGH.
Health rights in the post-2015 development agenda: Including non-nationals
Brolan CE, Dagron S, Forman L, Hammonds R, Latife LA and Waris A: Bulletin of the World Health Organisation 91(10): 719-719A, October 2013
Much debate around the September 2013 meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on the post-2015 Development Agenda, has focused on the health and intersectoral development goals. Little of this debate has to do, however with how the “right to the highest attainable level of health” applies to non-nationals, who normally have no access to health care services, according to this editorial. The right to health obligates governments to facilitate access to health care to nationals and non-nationals alike, the authors argue. Ensuring that governments apply new development goals that include non-nationals is an issue of pressing concern in the post-2015 agenda. The denial of preventive and curative care to non-nationals is often linked to policies regulating cross-border movement. The global health community cannot afford to ignore the in-country inequalities that exist within the public health care systems.
UN Special Event 25 September: Outcome Document
UN General Assembly, September 2013
Governments meeting at the UN General Assembly (GA) in September have heeded civil society demands for human rights to be at the core of the global commitments succeeding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015. The outcome document of the GA Special Event on the MDGs, held on 25 September, calls for a universal framework of goals applicable to all countries which promotes “human rights for all”. Once a lightning rod at UN development forums, human rights appear to have garnered consensus as a central foundation of development - at least on paper.
Universal health coverage, real or selective? Time for global health advocates to unite
Gorik Ooms
Universal health coverage “developed within the particular epidemiological, economic, socio-cultural, political and structural context of each country in accordance with the principle of national ownership”, as it is formulated in the 2012 UN General Assembly resolution, can, it is argued by the author, to possibly mean anything and everything. In low-income countries, it could mean something that looks a lot like selective primary health care, excluding antiretroviral treatment. For AIDS activists, universal health coverage could mean a giant step backwards. However the International HIV/AIDS Alliance came out with a statement in support of “universal health coverage. The words that matter are “rights-based approach”, as the author proposes that universal health coverage anchored in the right to health requires at least comprehensive primary health care, with duty-based international assistance to countries that are unable to provide comprehensive primary health care without assistance.
Litigating health rights: Can courts bring more justice to health?
Alicia Ely Yamin: Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University, Boston, MA, for the 141st APHA Annual Meeting, November 2013
Beginning with HIV and AIDS cases, the last fifteen years have seen a tremendous growth in the number of health rights cases. Yet questions still persist as to when and how litigation can lead to greater social justice in health and enhance the functioning of health systems, rather than distorting practices. In a number of countries, courts are in effect setting health policy and shaping funding priorities. Yet, little systematic attention has been paid to the equity implications of this litigation. Based on a comprehensive study of litigation in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia, India and South Africa, this presentation traces the beginnings of health rights litigation; reviews factors leading to judicial activism in health around the world; stresses the importance of differentiating contexts and kinds of interventions; and will discuss different methodologies for measuring impacts of litigation. Health rights litigation is extremely varied around the world. Factors that must be considered in assessing equity implications relate to the legal opportunity structure as well as other dimensions of the legal system, the organization of the health system, and the way in which the executive branch responds to judicial decisions.
Making Health a Right for all: Universal health coverage and Nutrition
ACF Int, Global Health Advocates, Terre des Hommes: France, 2013
This briefing paper explores how UHC can deliver on nutrition, and addresses in particular maternal and child undernutrition. The authors point to the need to ensure that Universal Health Coverage (UHC) can deliver on the fight against undernutrition. They recommend that national, European and global development policies consider a shift from emergency-focused interventions to ones that prevent and treat undernutrition. Budgetary and extra-budgetary resources need to be mobilised within health programs to reach UHC for scaling up the implementation of nutrition interventions. They present evidence that the implementation of community approaches will be mostly effective if designed in an integrated manner combining the most effective child and maternal interventions. Governments, through pooled risk funding,should ensure access for the most vulnerable and marginalised groups as defined by the specific country context and scale up the implementation of effective nutrition specific interventions within the health policies to reach UHC, such as by integrating the prevention and treatment against chronic and sever acute malnutrition into the management of childhood illnesses of WHO guidelines; and integrating at the national level the prevention and treatment of chronic acute malnutrition or severe acute malnutrition into primary health
care packages.
A transformative stand-alone goal on achieving gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment: Imperatives and key components
UN Women: June 2013
In this report, UN Women calls for a specific commitment to achieving gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment in the post-2015 development framework and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as robust mainstreaming of gender considerations across all parts of the framework. To make a difference, the new framework must be transformative, by addressing the structural impediments to gender equality and the achievement of women’s rights. In order to address the structural causes of gender-based discrimination and to support true transformation in gender relations, the report proposes an integrated approach that addresses three critical target areas of gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment. 1. Freedom from violence against women and girls, which includes concrete actions to eliminate the debilitating fear and/or experience of violence as the centre-piece of any future framework. 2. Gender equality in the distribution of capabilities – knowledge, good health, sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights of women and adolescent girls; and access to resources and opportunities, including land, decent work and equal pay to build women’s economic and social security. 3. Gender equality in decision-making power in public and private institutions, in national parliaments and local councils, the media and civil society, in the management and governance of firms, and in families and communities.