Animal health is often ignored, but indispensable to the human right to health

Although preventable by vaccines, approximately 60′000 humans die due to canine transmitted rabies annually, mostly in Africa and Asia. The aim of this paper is to advocate for including animal health aspects into considerations of human health and human rights, and for equitable access to rabies vaccination for both animals and humans. An infringement of human - in particular of children’s - right to health will be illustrated with the case of rabies and poor dog management in Uganda.

Article 24: The Right to Health

Article 24 reflects the perspective of the drafters that the right to health cannot be understood in narrow bio-medical terms or limited to the delivery of health services. Rather, in its reference, for example, to food, water, sanitation, and environmental dangers, it recognises the wider social and economic factors that influence and impact on the child’s state of health. Thus, the text of Article 24 sets out: a broad right to health for all children combined with a right of access to health services a priority focus on measures to address infant and child mortality, the provision of primary health care, nutritious food and clean drinking water, pre-natal and post-natal care, and preventive health care, including family planning the need for effective measures to abolish traditional practices harmful to children’s health a specific obligation on States Parties to cooperate internationally towards the realisation of the child’s right to health everywhere, having particular regard to the needs of developing countries. The right to health is a prime example of the interelatedness of child rights as it is contingent upon and informed by the realization of so many other rights guaranteed to children under the convention. This chapter analyses the child’s right to health in relation to four essential attributes. The first attribute of the child’s right to the highest attainable standard of health emphasizes what an exacting standard this human rights norm contains. Taking a social determinants of health perspective the right entails not just access to health services but programmatic supports in sanitation, transportation, education and other fields to guarantee the enjoyment of health. The second attribute focuses on the Basic minimum criteria of the right to health as reflected in Article 24(2). A third attribute is the insistence upon child health accountability mechanisms using the Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability and Quality Accountability Framework. Finally, given the wide discrepancies in enjoyment of children’s right to health across the globe, a fourth attribute focuses upon international cooperation to ensure equal access to the right to health.

Challenges to the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms Including Patient Rights During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Turkey

The COVID-19 virus, which first appeared in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and spread quickly to the whole world in a few months, was defined as a pandemic by the World Health Organization on 12 March 2020. This process has inevitably brought along problems in many areas, including health, education, social, economics, law, psychology, politics, and international relations. The pandemic era is a period when we appreciate more than ever how valuable our fundamental rights and freedoms are. Of these rights, the right to health and patient rights are significantly adversely impacted. This chapter will evaluate human rights, especially patient rights, mostly affected during this pandemic period in Turkey. This chapter further presents that other states are also continuing to experience effects of the pandemic. Both Turkey and other states must be prepared for the patients to properly benefit from the healthcare system in future outbreaks and pandemics. Otherwise, human and patient rights will continue to suffer.

Happiness as an Expression of Health

Health gained a global prominence and became a right declared by the World Health Organization in 1948. In the 21st century, it is understood as a complete well-being of the individual, far beyond the absence of disease. In this context, the right to happiness translates as an expression of the aspirations for the realization of the right to health. Thus, this chapter aims to understand, in the light of the Freudian perspective, the aspects of soul life that lead the individual to the exhausting task of seeking happiness and seeks to reflect the possible contributions that legal science can offer to the improvement of individual well-being as a right health in the context of global health. Freud's theories about the formation of the psychic apparatus, his conception of malaise caused by culture and legal interventions that can possibly contribute to the reduction of individual unhappiness are presented.