The right to health is understood as the right to have access to health services. However, it is not an absolute right, as such, to be in good health. The WHO defines health services as all activities intended to restore and maintain health. One therefore has to include vaccinations, medical care, but also sanitary services related to water and hygiene, and a clean environment under this heading, as well as all activities ensuring access to food resources. Those “underlying determinants of health” imply consideration of the right to health in a broader perspective, which is the basis of Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The corollary of this right is the idea that states are responsible for adopting appropriate sanitary and social measures for the populations to have effective access to health services. Such obligations are found in several legal instruments, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Articles 12, 24), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Article 5), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Articles 10, 12, and 14), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 24).
These legal instruments are applicable at all times, including during armed conflict. Within possible limits, medicine has always responded to the needs of injured persons and tried to limit the means and methods of warfare, including through describing and providing expertise to better understand the effects of weapons. In his work ‘On The Physician’, Hippocrates refers to war injuries as an area of surgical specialization. Based on reports of the consequences on health of the use of nuclear weapons, two physicians, a Russian and an American, launched the idea of an association of medical doctors to prevent a nuclear war. This idea was the origin of the creation of the organization called International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in Geneva. In 1985, this association received the Nobel Peace Prize for making people aware of the catastrophic consequences a nuclear conflict would entail.
Post Contributed By:
Ashish Ransom
Indian Institute Of Legal Studies
