The most recent issue of Health Exchange, the magazine of Healthlink Worldwide, focuses on the right to health.   

Paul Hunt, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health (2002-2008), leads with an article discussing the meaning of this right which is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the change in perceptions and actions over the last decade.

Other articles range from demonstrating that people do not always exercise their right to access services; how strong legislation and accountability mechanisms are needed to reinforce the right to health; how an organisation of women with disabilities in Sri Lanka is raising awareness about rights and trying to use the law as a framework for change; to how some health workers, for example in Uganda, are being trained as human rights advocates.

The General Secretary of the International Federation of Anti-Leprosy Associations (ILEP), Mr Douglas Soutar, has contributed an article about people affected by leprosy, whose rights are often unfulfilled. Not only should their treatment and care be included within the general primary health services, like other services such as prevention of disability and broader community-based rehabilitation programmes, Mr Soutar concludes that: “…work to uphold the human rights and dignity of people affected by leprosy needs to be integrated into the growing efforts, both globally and locally, to pursue integrated and inclusive rights-based approaches to health and development for all.”

In the December 2009 Issue of Health Exchange: 

• The Human Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health
• Rights Advocacy for Indigenous Populations in Cambodia
• High Impact Litigation and Access to Abortion in Columbia
• Social Housing Residents
• Training Health Workers to be Human Rights Advocates
• Global Right to Health and Health Care Campaign
• Leprosy and Human Rights
• Korsang: Cambodian Drug Users’ Right to Health
• Disability and Human Rights in Sri Lanka
• Sex Work, Rights and HIV
• The Right to Health in Uruguay
• Resources
  

Click on the following link to access these articles at Health Exchange online: http://healthexchangenews.com/

Healthlink Worldwide website: http://www.healthlink.org.uk/ 

Categories: International Collaboration, News and Notes