HUMAN RIGHTS

HUMAN RIGHTS ON HEALTH
● Human rights are universal and inalienable. They apply
equally, to all people, everywhere, without distinction.
● Human rights are the basic rights and freedoms that
belong to every person in the world, from birth until death.
● They apply regardless of where you are from, what you
believe or how you choose to live your life.
● It can never be taken away, although it can sometimes be
restricted – for example if a person breaks the law, or in
the interests of national security.
● These basic rights are based on shared values like dignity,
fairness, equality, respect and independence. These values
are defined and protected by law.
The World Health Organization and Universal Declaration of
Human Rights realised "the highest attainable standard of
health as a fundamental right of every human being.”
● Acknowledging health as a human right, recognizes a legal
obligation on states to ensure appropriate conditions for
the enjoyment of health for all people to timely,
acceptable, and affordable health care without
discrimination and through allocation of “maximum
available resources” .
The right to health, as with other rights, includes both
freedoms and entitlements:
★FREEDOMS include
1. Right to control one’s health and body
Example- sexual and reproductive rights
2. Right to be free from interference
Example- free from torture and non-consensual medical
treatment and experimentation
SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
The fulfilment of sexual health is tied to the extent to which
human rights are respected, protected and fulfilled. They also

include the right of all to make decisions concerning
reproduction free of discrimination and violence.
Sexual and reproductive health is related to multiple human
rights, including:
● Right to equality and non-discrimination-
Individual's right to plan a family, terminate a pregnancy,
choose preferred methods of contraceptives, learn about
sex education in public schools, and gain access to
reproductive health services.
● Right to be free from torture , inhumane or
degrading treatment or punishment-
A.TORTURE- Torture occurs when someone deliberately
causes very serious and cruel suffering (physical or mental) to
another person. This might be to punish someone, or to
intimidate or obtain information from them.
B.INHUMAN TREATMENT-Inhuman treatment or
punishment is treatment which causes intense physical or
mental suffering. It includes:
● serious physical assault
● psychological interrogation
● Restraints
● serious physical or psychological abuse in a
health or care setting.
C.DEGRADING TREATMENTS- Degrading treatment
means treatment that is extremely humiliating and
undignified.These include the duration of the treatment, its
physical or mental effects and the sex, age, vulnerability and
health of the victim.No one shall be subjected to torture or to
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
EXAMPLE- Intimate Partner violence
It occurs in both opposite sex or same sex relationships. It can
occur between married couples,living together or dating . It has
different forms like physically,verbally,mentally,sexually and
economically.

● Right to marry and to found a family and
enter into marriage with the free and full
consent of the intending spouses.
● Right to maintain privacy- It is the right of an
individual that his/her personal and medical information
is kept private or confidential. Such delicate and
confidential information about the individual should only
be in between hi/her and the doctor, physician, healthcare
or health insurance company.
● Right to decide the number and spacing of
one's children- men and women both have equal
rights in deciding freely and responsibly on the number
and taking a gap between their children.
● Rights to freedom of opinion and expression-
Everyone has freedom of thought. This right includes
freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas through any
media.
● Rights to information, as well as education.
★ENTITLEMENTS include the right to a system
of health protection that gives everyone an equal
opportunity to enjoy the highest attainable level of health.
● The right to health for all people means that everyone
should have access to the health services they need, when
and where they need them, without suffering financial
hardship.
● Everyone should be entitled to control their own health
and body, including having access to sexual and
reproductive information and services, free from violence
and discrimination.
● basic human rights including access to safe drinking water
and sanitation, nutritious foods, adequate housing,
education and safe working conditions.

Core principles of human rights
A. ACCOUNTABILITY
State human right organisations keep a check whether human
rights are being properly used or not. There is an increased
need for non-state organisations to take part in protection of
human rights. Accountability has been a major issue in
healthcare. Health care practitioners and the facilitators of
healthcare have to be held responsible for any lapses in
healthcare provided and have to be held accountable for the
outcomes of treatment that they provide to the patients.
B. EQUITY AND NON-DISCRIMINATION
● Non discrimination means to guarantee that human rights
are exercised without any discrimination of any kind based
on religion, colour, sex, language, political affinity,
national and social origin, property, birth status such as
disability, age, marital and family status, sexual
orientation and gender identity, health status, place of
residence, economic and social situation.
● Equity is the absence of unfair, avoidable or remediable
differences among groups of people, whether those groups
are defined socially, economically, demographically, or
geographically or by other dimensions of inequality.
● Non discrimination and equality are two important factors
to enjoy right for health.
EXAMPLE-people suffering from HIV AIDS are often
discriminated against based on stigma. This human right
violation is widespread and is most often directed towards the
marginalised and stigmatised population of the society.
Oxfam India (NGO) published only 4% Dalits and 15%
adivasis have access to private healthcare institutions which
accounts for nearly 62% of the total health infrastructure. This
poses a burden for the marginalised communities as 45.9% of
adivasis and 26.6% of dalits are in the lowest wealth quintile.

Solving these challenges requires the implementation and
scale-up of targeted, coordinated, time-bound, evidence-based,
multisectoral actions to eliminate discrimination in health-care
settings.These includes-
A. Monitoring levels of discrimination in
health-care settings, including the experiences of
health service users, as well as the attitudes and practices
of service providers.
B. Educating the health workforce, including
pre-service and in-service training to develop human
rights and gender equality competencies, as well as an
understanding of medical ethics and of the rights and
responsibilities of health workers in addressing
discrimination in health-care settings.
C.Reviewing and reforming laws, policies and
institutional practices to ensure that they provide a
supportive environment for discrimination-free health
care.
D.Empowering health service users and increasing
their access to justice by making them aware of and able
to claim their rights, including those to discrimination-free
health care, through rights/legal literacy programmes and
legal services.
C. PARTICIPATION
● Participation means taking part. The right to participation
is the “the right of rights”, that is the basic right of people
to have a say in how decisions that affect their lives are
made.
● In 1978 Declaration of Alma-Ata on Primary Health Care
states that “people have the right and duty to participate
individually and collectively in the planning and
implementation of their health care.”
● when people are given the opportunity to be active
participants in their own care, instead of passive
recipients, their human rights are respected, the outcomes
are better and health systems become more efficient.

● But nobody should be subjected to medical
experimentation, forced medical examination, or given
treatment without informed consent.
● When people are marginalised or face stigma or
discrimination, their physical and mental health suffers.
Discrimination in health care is unacceptable and is a
major barrier to development.
According to who data-
1.30 per cent of the global population is not able to access
essential health services even till today.
2. Two billion people face catastrophic or impoverishing
health spending.
3. About 930 million people worldwide are at risk of falling
into poverty due to out-of-pocket health spending .
CORE COMPONENTS OF RIGHTS OF HEALTH
Availability
Need for a sufficient quantity of functioning public health and
health care facilities, goods and services, as well as programmes
for all.
Availability can be measured through the analysis of
disaggregated data to different and multiple stratifiers
including by age, sex, location and socio-economic status and
qualitative surveys to understand coverage gaps and health
workforce coverage.
Accessibility
Requires that health facilities, goods, and services must be
accessible to everyone. Accessibility has four overlapping
dimensions:
● non-discrimination
● physical accessibility
● economical accessibility (affordability)
● information accessibility.

Assessing accessibility may require analysis of barriers –
physical financial or otherwise – that exist, and how they may
affect the most vulnerable, and call for the establishment or
application of clear norms and standards in both law and policy
to address these barriers, as well as robust monitoring systems
of health-related information and whether this information is
reaching all populations.
Acceptability
Acceptability requires that health facilities, goods, services and
programmes are people-centred and cater for the specific needs
of diverse population groups and in accordance with
international standards of medical ethics for confidentiality and
informed consent.
Quality
Quality is a key component of Universal Health Coverage, and
includes the experience as well as the perception of health care.
Quality health services should be:
● Safe – avoiding injuries to people for whom the care is
intended
● Effective – providing evidence-based healthcare
services to those who need them.
● Timely – reducing waiting times and sometimes
harmful delays.
● Equitable – providing care that does not vary in
quality on account of gender, ethnicity, geographic
location, and socio-economic status.
● Efficient – maximising the benefit of available
resources and avoiding waste of time and sources.
● Integrated – providing care that makes available the
full range of health services throughout the life course.
● People-centred – providing care that responds to
individual preferences, needs and values.

WHO feels that scaling up primary health care (PHC)
interventions across low and middle- income countries could
save 60 million lives and increase average life expectancy by 3.7
years by 2030.
WHO has made a commitment to support Member States in
their efforts to mainstream human rights into healthcare
programmes and policies by looking at underlying
determinants of health as part of a comprehensive approach to
health and human rights.
A focus on disadvantage also reveals evidence of those who are
exposed to greater rates of ill-health and face significant
obstacles to access quality and affordable healthcare, including
indigenous populations.
The central principle of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development is to ensure that no one is left behind.
We have a long way to go until everyone – no matter who they
are, where they live, or how much money they have access to
these basic human rights.

HUMAN RIGHTS

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