"One-third of all human lives end in early death from poverty-related causes. Most of these premature deaths are avoidable through global institutional reforms that would eradicate extreme poverty...The rules should be redesigned so that the development of any new drug is rewarded in proportion to its impact on the global disease burden...The existing medical-patent regime (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights - TRIPS - as supplemented by bilateral agreements) is severely unjust - and its imposition a human-rights violation on account of the avoidable mortality and morbidity it foreseeably produces."
Values, Policies and Rights
Human rights and global health
Pogge, Thomas W. (2005), Metaphilosophy 36 (1-2), 182-209
Does AIDS threaten the right to land?
There are between 500 and 700 AIDS-related deaths in Kenya every day. Beyond this tragedy, the HIV/AIDS epidemic creates problems in many aspects of social and economic life. One such problem is decreased security of land tenure. There are dramatic accounts of AIDS widows and orphans being chased from their land and many more that tell of an increased sense of tenure insecurity due to HIV/AIDS. Is this the whole story of the relationship between HIV/AIDS and land rights? Research sponsored by the Department for International Development (UK) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations examines the relationship between HIV/AIDS and land rights in three Kenyan districts.
Global right to health campaign launched
The People's Health Movement, an international organisation of health activists, launched a new global campaign on the right to health at its second assembly in Cuenca, Ecuador, held from 18 to 23 July. Assembly delegates from many countries attested to the campaign's importance. Increasing erosion in access to universal health care, growth of unregulated private providers, and declines in public funding are leaving millions of people without insured services.
AIDS in Uganda: the human-rights dimension
The Lancet 2005; 365:2075-2076
"It is time to shift the debate over HIV prevention in Uganda. Rather than focusing on the precise combination of A, B, and C that contributed to the country's HIV decline, researchers should condemn censorship of life-saving HIV/AIDS information and discrimination against vulnerable populations such as lesbians and gays. It is bad enough that the USA is exporting ignorance and prejudice to countries already devastated by HIV. Researchers should not ignore these human-rights violations by focusing on the wrong issue." (requires registration)
Brazil and Access to HIV/AIDS Drugs: A Question of Human Rights and Public Health
American Journal of Public Health
This article explores the relationship between public health and human rights using as an example the Brazilian policy on free and universal access to antiretroviral medicines for people living with HIV/AIDS. The Brazilian response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which arose from initiatives in both civil society and the governmental sector, followed the process of the democratization of the country. If the Brazilian experience may not be easily transferred to other realities, the model of the Brazilian response may nonetheless serve as an inspiration to finding appropriate and life-saving solutions in other national contexts. (abstract only)
Human rights and Health Equity
This bibliography pulls together recent articles that speak to the relationship between human rights and health, particularly focused on health equity, poverty and community agency. The bibliography was prepared for the EQUINET Health Rights theme and the articles described in the bibliography have informed much of the conceptual approaches developed in EQUINET to harnessing rights approaches to build health equity. The bibliography overlaps to some extent with other bibliographies held by EQUINET on health equity themes. It should prove useful for researchers exploring issues of human rights in relation to equity. The intention is to keep this bibliography updated in future, to support EQUINET’s activities in this area.
Human rights commitments relevant to heath made by states in Southern Africa: Implications for health equity
The audit aims to 1. conduct a review of the regional and international human rights instruments relevant to health; and 2. review the national commitments that have been made under these human rights instruments.
What is the Rights Based Approach all about?
In the last few years, there has been growing talk amongst development actors and agencies about a “rights-based approach” to development. Yet what exactly this consists of remains unclear. For some, its grounding in human rights legislation makes such an approach distinctive, lending it the promise of re-politicising areas of development work that have become domesticated as they have been “mainstreamed” by powerful institutions like the World Bank. Others complain that like other fashions it has become the latest designer item to be seen to be wearing and has been used to dress up the same old development. This paper from the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) seeks to unravel some of the tangled threads of contemporary rights talk.
The link between good governance and good health
HIV prevalence is significantly associated with poor governance. International public health programs need to address societal structures in order to create strong foundations upon which effective healthcare interventions can be implemented, according to a recent study in the journal International Health and Human Rights. Only governments sensitive to the demands of their citizens appropriately respond to needs of their nation. Based on Professor Amartya Sen's analysis of the link between famine and democracy, the study tested the null hypothesis: "Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) prevalence is not associated with governance".
Health, human rights and mobilization of resources for health
BMC International Health and Human Rights 2004
This paper argues that the human rights framework does provide us with an appropriate understanding of what values should guide a nation's health policy, and a potentially powerful means of moving the health agenda forward. It also, however, argues that appeals to human rights may not necessarily be effective at mobilizing resources for specific health problems one might want to do something about. Specifically, it is not possible to argue that a particular allocation of scarce health care resources should be changed to a different allocation, benefiting other groups. Lack of access to health care services by some people only shows that something has to be done, but not what should be done.