Should human rights talk be applied to health?
by Lalith Polepeddi on April 8, 2009
Today in globalhealthU, we went over the keynotes and workshops from the truly inspiring GlobeMed Summit 2009. We focused in on one event in particular: the much-discussed panel discussion between Drs Evan Lyon, Laurie Zoloth, and Nirav Shah. I've summarized a couple of the main points from our discussion below. So take a look at them and let me know who you agree with or why a position is wrong by commenting on the post!
-Lalith
EVAN LYON: There is a gap between how we think of health and how we describe health. When we talk about health, we say "this is the best healthcare your money can buy," while on the other hand we don't say things like "this is the best police force or judicial system your money can buy." We still talk about health as if its purchaseable, but we need to talk about it as a right.
LAURIE ZOLOTH: Rights language instills in us a sense of duty to partake in health delivery. Rights talk provides a duty and motive in ourselves to feel the call to service.
NIRAV SHAH: What's the point of using rights talk? People understand that there exist health disparities in the world, so why add another convenient layer of intellectualism? Can saying 'health is a human right' really help convince people? You can't really discuss whether something is a human right because if two people don't agree, then their conversation is essentially over. Instead, what you can discuss is policy and data. It is this evidence that can drive implementation of health projects, not rights language. Therefore the human rights framework really isn't useful and should be abandoned.
COUNTERPOINT: Human rights language is not meant to enable implementation of health projects, it creates a mechanism for us to identify disparities. In identifying ineqity we can start to take the next step and ask what else should be done.
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