Public Health Rights and Ethics: Conflicts, Contestations and Expanding Horizons

2018 ◽  
pp. 21-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Premdas Pinto
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Rights

Advancing Health Rights in a Globalized World: Responding to Globalization through a Collective Human Right to Public Health

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 545-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Mason Meier
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Health Inequities ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Public Health Systems ◽  
The Right ◽  
Health Rights ◽  
Globalized World

In confronting the insalubrious ramifications of globalization, human rights scholars and activists have argued for greater national and international responsibility pursuant to the human right to health. Codified seminally in Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the right to health proclaims that states bear an obligation to realize the “highest attainable standard” of health for all. However, in pressing for the highest attainable standard for each individual, the right to health has been ineffective in compelling states to address burgeoning inequalities in underlying determinants of health, focusing on individual medical treatments at the expense of public health systems. This article contends that the paradigm of individual health, focused on a right to individual medical care, is incapable of responding to health inequities in a globalized world and thereby hampers efforts to operationalize health rights through public health systems. While the right to health has evolved in international discourse over time, this evolution of the individual right to health cannot address the harmful societal ramifications of economic globalization. Rather than relying solely upon an individual right to medical care, envisioning a collective right to public health – a right applied at the societal level to address underlying determinants of health – would alleviate many of the injurious health inequities of globalization.

scholarly journals Collision of Fundamental Human Rights and the Right to Health Access During the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luiz Gondim dos Santos ◽  
Paulo André Stein Messetti ◽  
Fernando Adami ◽  
Italla Maria Pinheiro Bezerra ◽  
Paula Christianne G. G. Souto Maia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Health Systems ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Healthcare Systems ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Health Access ◽  
Individual Health ◽  
Health Rights

Introduction: COVID-19 requires governmental measures to protect healthcare system access for people. In this process, the collision of fundamental rights emerges as a crucial challenge for decision-making.Policy Options and Implications: This policy review analyzes selected articles by the PubMed searcher about extreme measures taken in several countries during precedent pandemics and the current pandemic, and selects hard decisions relating to the exceptional measures taken by judicial departments in Brazil, connecting them to the “collision of fundamental rights and law principles.” The collision of rights and principles imposed on decision makers a duty to provide balanced rights, and to adopt the enforcement of some rights prioritization. Ethical concerns were also verified in this field involving rights limitations. During a pandemic, the importance of extreme measures to protect health rights and healthcare systems is instrumental for focused, fast, and correct decision making to avoid loss of life and the collapse of healthcare systems. The main goals of this research are to discuss the implications and guidelines for public health decision making, the indispensable ethical and legal aspects for safeguarding health systems and the lives of people, and the respect of the Justice principle and of fundamental health and dignity rights. We conclude that COVID-19 justifies the prioritization of collective and individual health access rights. Acceptable standards of fundamental rights restrictions are established at the constitutional and international levels and must be enforced by rules and governmental action, to ensure fast and accurate decision making during a pandemic. Freedom rights exercises must be linked to solidarity for the realization of social welfare, for the health rights of all individuals and for health systems to function well during a pandemic.Actionable Recommendations: All individuals are free and equal, therefore social exclusion is prohibited. Institutions must consider social inequalities when discussing public health measures and be guided by ethical standards, by law principles, and rules recognized by constitutional and international law for the benefit of all during a health pandemic.Conclusions: Collective and individual health rights prevail over the collision of rights when facing pandemic occurrences, case by case, in health systems protection, based on the literature, on precedent pandemics and on legitimate Public Health efforts.

Rethinking Rights in the Age of the “Anthropocene”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen C. Sokol
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Civil And Political Rights ◽  
The Right ◽  
Health Rights

The current age of climate change—what geologists call the “Anthropocene”— lays bare the falsity of the “rights” dichotomy dominant in Western legal theory. Under that dichotomy, civil and political rights are conceived of as separate from, and more important than, the right to basic health and environmental protection. The author argues that two of the key principles in the Indian texts on which Gandhi based his theory of civil disobedience—love for all beings (ahimsa) and the interconnectedness of all beings and the Earth—provide a basis for dismantling this “rights” dichotomy. The author then discusses other theories of rights that could accommodate a Gandhian-informed unified theory—one that includes civil, political, environmental, and public health rights on equal footing. Such a reconceptualization of rights is necessary to respond to the immense global environmental and public health threats we all face in the age of the Anthropocene.

Human Rights Issues and Health Practices

1998 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald E Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Bias ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Health Practices ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Health Rights ◽  
Public Health Practitioners ◽  
Rights Issues

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the context of current adverse economic circumstance in the Asia-Pacific region, it is apparent that we still have a long way to go before we can claim adequate promotion and protection of fundamental freedoms, human rights and health rights. New approaches to public health and a social, or population definition of health requires an active engagement with human rights and a recognition of the ethical domain. Such an engagement is assisted by the articulation of some of the fundamental principles underlying various Conventions, Charters and Declarations and the contribution of liberal moral and political theory to such documents. Such liberal traditions have been challenged for their ethnocentrism and western cultural bias. However it is argued that they form a basis for important universal standards which can assist public health practitioners as they navigate through the turbulent waters of human rights issues and health practices.

Bayev and Others v. Russia

2021 ◽  
Vol 194 ◽  
pp. 173-225
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Sexual Relations ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Bisexual And Transgender ◽  
Health Rights

173Human rights — Freedom of expression — Prohibition of discrimination — Sexual orientation — Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues — Applicants gay rights activists — Applicants fined for administrative offence in Russia of public activities aimed at promotion of homosexuality among minors — Existence of legislative ban in Russia on promotion of homosexuality or non-traditional sexual relations among minors — Whether Russian legislative provisions compatible with European Convention on Human Rights, 1950 — Whether legislative provisions violating applicants’ rights to freedom of expression — Whether interference with exercise of freedom of expression — Whether interference justified — Public morals — Public health — Rights of others — Whether legislative ban discriminatory — Whether respondent State violating Article 10, and Article 14 taken in conjunction with Article 10, of the European Convention on Human Rights, 1950

Promoting Social Justice Through Education in Public Health

2019 ◽  
pp. 517-530
Author(s):  
Robert S. Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Master Of Public Health ◽  
The Social ◽  
Crucial Information ◽  
Health Rights ◽  
Public Health Practitioners ◽  
Future Work

This chapter explores how to promote social justice through education programs for students in schools of public health, medical school departments of community and preventive medicine, and elsewhere. It also examines how education can equip public health practitioners, researchers, and educators with a social justice perspective that will guide their future work. Two major developments provide crucial information and values for developing and implementing social justice curricula: human rights law and progress in developing analyses of the social determinants of health. This chapter covers principles of social justice, the integration of human rights with public health, and a historical context for the evolution of related developments. The chapter describes examples of the introduction of social justice into public health curricula. The chapter concludes with an agenda for action. A text box contains the International Declaration of Health Rights. A second text box describes the Simmons Master of Public Health in Health Equity program.

The Right to Health in Relation to Human Rights

LAW REVIEW ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (01) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lily Srivastava
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Indian Health ◽  
Health Goals ◽  
The Right ◽  
Health Rights

Laws are an essential tool for improving public health capacity and thus for their public health outcomes. Effective responses to emerging threats and the attainment of public health goals require that the International world, States, their governments and partner organizations be legally prepared. Public health law focuses on the nexus between law, public health and the legal tools applicable to public health issues. The second part of the research paper attempts to analysis of the existing National and International guidelines, and Legislations in relation to health policy of India and access the need for a rights sensitive legislation. Third part of the research papers explores the judicial contribution in establishing right to health as basic human rights. Fourth part compares Indian health rights with some other countries. Finally the research paper suggests some recommendations that exists for a contemporary framework with proper implementation to address this issue

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