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The Right
to Health
What is meant by
the right to health?
The right to health is a claim to a set of institutional
arrangements and environmental conditions that are needed for the realization
of the highest attainable standard of health. The right to health does not
mean the right to be healthy.
The right is an inclusive right, which extends in addition
to timely and appropriate health care also to the underlying determinants of
health, such as housing, food and nutrition, water, healthy occupational and
environmental conditions and access to health-related information and
education.
The General Comment on the right to health, adopted by the
Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 2000 sets out four
criteria (often referred to as “AAAQ” criteria) by which to evaluate the
right to health:
 AVAILABILITY (meaning goods services, and programmes need to be available in sufficient quantity)
ACCESSIBILITY (meaning non-discrimination,
physical accessibility, affordability and information accessibility)
ACCEPTABILITY (ethical, gender-sensitive and
culturally appropriate facilities, goods and services)
QUALITY (health facilities, goods and services
of good quality e.g. trained health professionals, safe drugs etc.)
Read
more on right to health (factsheet)…
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