The Complex Structure of Health Rights

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-110
Author(s):  
Michael Da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Complex Structure ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Right To Health Care ◽  
Traditional Structure ◽  
Ongoing Work ◽  
The Right ◽  
Health Rights ◽  
Health Justice

Abstract Research on how to understand legally recognized socio-economic rights produced many insights into the nature of rights. Legally recognized rights to health and, by extension, health care could contribute to health justice. Yet a tension remains between widespread international and transnational constitutional recognition of rights to health and health care and compelling normative conditions for rights recognition from both philosophers seeking to identify the scope and structure of the rights and policy scholars seeking to understand how to practically realize such rights (and measure realization of same). This work identifies an overlooked source of these difficulties: the right to health care and other health rights are necessarily ‘complex’, consisting of multiple related, but irreducible, morally valuable components. ‘Complex rights’ do not fit the traditional structure of human rights, so legal recognition of same can appear confused from a philosophical perspective, but there is ample reason to admit complex rights into our moral ontology and doing so can help bridge the divide between global health practices and ongoing work in the philosophy of rights and public policy. Recognition of complex rights admittedly shifts the burden for justifying health rights, but it does so in a way that is instructive for general philosophical analysis of socio-economic rights.

A Right to Health Care

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavlos Eleftheriadis
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Right To Health Care ◽  
The Right ◽  
International Conventions ◽  
Special Case

Do we have a legal and moral right to health care against others? There are international conventions and institutions that say emphatically yes, and they summarize this in the expression of “the right to health,” which is an established part of the international human rights canon. The International Covenant on Social and Economic Rights outlines this as “the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health,” but declarations such as this remain tragically unfulfilled. According to recent figures, roughly two billion people lack access to essential drugs or to primary health care. Millions are afflicted by infections and illnesses that are easily avoidable or treatable. In the developing world many children die or grow stunted and damaged for lack of available treatments. Tropical diseases receive little or no attention by the major pharmaceutical companies’ research departments. Is this a massive violation of the right to health? And if so, why does it attract so little attention? Is it because our supposed commitment to human rights and the rule of law is hypocritical and hollow? Or is it because the right to health is a special case of a right, so that these tragedies are no violation at all? Jennifer Prah Ruger summarized this puzzle when she wrote: “one would be hard pressed to find a more controversial or nebulous human right than the right to health.” In this essay I discuss three different theories of a right to health care. I conclude by offering my own reconstruction of one such theory.

Social and Economic Rights

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-219
Author(s):  
Claire Fenton-Glynn
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Parental Leave ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Right To Health Care ◽  
Healthy Environment ◽  
The Status ◽  
Consent To Treatment ◽  
The Right ◽  
Social And Economic Rights

This chapter focuses on four social and economic rights which have been invoked in relation to children before the European Court of Human Rights: the right to health care, the right to a healthy environment, the right to property, and the right to social welfare. In relation to health care, it considers issues concerning consent to treatment, immunisation and disease prevention, privacy, and medical negligence. The chapter then examines the issue of abortion, focusing on the status of the unborn children under the Convention, as well as the right to effective access to treatment. The right to a healthy environment is also analysed, although this issue has only been briefly considered in the context of children’s rights. Finally, the child’s right to property, in the context of misuse of property, inheritance rights, and child maintenance are considered, as well as social security and social welfare, including parental leave and allowances, and access to state benefits.

The Right to Health Care

JAMA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 317 (13) ◽  
pp. 1378
Author(s):  
Howard Bauchner
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Right To Health Care ◽  
The Right

Children and adolescents with cancer: vulnerabilities and implications on the right to health

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisangela Argenta Zanatta ◽  
Ketelin Figueira da Silva ◽  
Clarissa Bohrer da Silva ◽  
Maria Luiza Bevilaqua Brum ◽  
Maria da Graça Corso da Motta
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
Chronic Diseases ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Support Networks ◽  
Health Care Network ◽  
The Right ◽  
Health Rights

ABSTRACT Objective To know situations of vulnerabilities experienced by children and adolescents with cancer and their implications on health rights. Method A qualitative study, developed from 2017 to 2018, in two Santa Catarina hospitals. The interviewees were 11 family members of children/adolescents with cancer, a prevalent chronic disease identified in hospitalizations in 2017. A descriptive and thematic analysis was carried out based on the vulnerability and human rights framework. Results Among the chronic diseases, cancer was prevalent. Vulnerability situations were discussed considering the trajectories in the health care network, the challenges facing the care routine and the support networks for the exercise of the right to health. Final considerations Chronic diseases such as cancer require timely, decisive and effective responses from the health system with a view to maintaining human rights.

Art.15 Protection against Torture and Cruel or Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fennell Phil
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Informed Consent ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Right To Health ◽  
Legal Capacity ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Right To Health Care ◽  
United Nations Convention ◽  
Degrading Treatment ◽  
The Right

This chapter examines Article 15 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment (CIDTP), irrespective of the circumstances and the victim’s behaviour. Article 15 rights overlap with rights under other CRPD articles, including the right to legal capacity on an equal basis with others under Article 12; the right to liberty and security under Article 14; the right to protection against violence, exploitation and abuse under Article 16; the right to physical and mental integrity under Article 17 and; the right to health care on an equal basis with others and based on informed consent under Article 25.

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