{"title":"Addressing Stigma is Not Enough.","authors":"Joseph J Amon, Nina Sun, Alexandrina Iovita, Ralf Jurgens, Joanne Csete","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46953,"journal":{"name":"Health and Human Rights","volume":"24 2","pages":"111-114"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/2e/61/hhr-24-02-111.PMC9790942.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10609670","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Katrina Perehudoff, Heba Qazilbash, Kai Figueras de Vries
{"title":"A Needle in a Haystack? Human Rights Framing at the World Trade Organization for Access to COVID-19 Vaccines.","authors":"Katrina Perehudoff, Heba Qazilbash, Kai Figueras de Vries","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>How and why is implicit and explicit human rights language used by World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiators in debates about intellectual property, know-how, and technology needed to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines, and how do these findings compare with negotiators' human rights framing in 2001? Sampling 26 WTO members and two groups of members, this study uses document analysis and six key informant interviews with WTO negotiators, a representative of the WTO Secretariat, and a nonstate actor. In WTO debates about COVID-19 medicines, negotiators scarcely used human rights frames (e.g., \"human rights\" or \"right to health\"). Supporters used both human rights frames and implicit language (e.g., \"equity,\" \"affordability,\" and \"solidarity\") to garner support for the TRIPS waiver proposal, while opponents and WTO members with undetermined positions on the waiver used only implicit language to advocate for alternative proposals. WTO negotiators use human rights frames to appeal to previously agreed language about state obligations; for coherence between their domestic values and policy on one hand, and their global policy positions on the other; and to catalyze public support for the waiver proposal beyond the WTO. This mixed-methods design yields a rich contextual understanding of the modern role of human rights language in trade negotiations relevant for public health.</p>","PeriodicalId":46953,"journal":{"name":"Health and Human Rights","volume":"24 2","pages":"141-157"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/fc/06/hhr-24-02-141.PMC9790961.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10444654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Improving Access to COVID-19 Vaccines: An Analysis of TRIPS Waiver Discourse among WTO Members, Civil Society Organizations, and Pharmaceutical Industry Stakeholders.","authors":"Jillian Kohler, Anna Wong, Lauren Tailor","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, international access to COVID-19 vaccines and other health technologies has remained highly asymmetric. This inequity has had a particularly deleterious impact on low- and middle-income countries, engaging concerns about the human rights to health and to the equal enjoyment of the benefits of scientific progress enshrined under articles 12 and 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In response, the relationship between intellectual property rights and public health has reemerged as a subject of global interest. In October 2020, a wholesale waiver of the copyright, patent, industrial design, and undisclosed information sections of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS Agreement) was proposed by India and South Africa as a legal mechanism to increase access to affordable COVID-19 medical products. Here, we identify and evaluate the TRIPS waiver positions of World Trade Organization (WTO) members and other key stakeholders throughout the waiver's 20-month period of negotiation at the WTO. In doing so, we find that most stakeholders declined to explicitly contextualize the TRIPS waiver within the human right to health and that historical stakeholder divisions on the relationship between intellectual property and access to medicines appear largely unchanged since the early 2000s HIV/AIDS crisis. Given the WTO's consensus-based decision-making process, this illuminates key challenges faced by policy makers seeking to leverage the international trading system to improve equitable access to health technologies.</p>","PeriodicalId":46953,"journal":{"name":"Health and Human Rights","volume":"24 2","pages":"159-175"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/fc/16/hhr-24-02-159.PMC9790937.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10454121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yara M Asi, Weeam Hammoudeh, David Mills, Osama Tanous, Bram Wispelwey
{"title":"Reassembling the Pieces: Settler Colonialism and the Reconception of Palestinian Health.","authors":"Yara M Asi, Weeam Hammoudeh, David Mills, Osama Tanous, Bram Wispelwey","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46953,"journal":{"name":"Health and Human Rights","volume":"24 2","pages":"229-235"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9790940/pdf/hhr-24-02-229.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9180644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Role of Civil Society in Mobilizing Human Rights Struggles for Essential Medicines: A Critique from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.","authors":"Sharifah Sekalala, Belinda Rawson","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this paper, we explore the strategies utilized by civil society organizations to improve access to medicines during the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 health crises. In particular, we seek to illuminate why some of the successful approaches for increasing access to antiretrovirals for HIV/AIDS in the early 2000s failed in creating equitable global access to COVID-19 vaccines. While civil society has historically mobilized human rights to facilitate greater access to essential medicines, we argue that earlier strategies were not always sustainable and that civil society is now mobilizing human rights in radically different ways than previously. Instead of focusing chiefly on securing an intellectual property waiver to the TRIPS Agreement, civil society organizations are now challenging vaccine injustice, rejecting the \"charity discourse\" that fuels Global South dependency on Global North actors in favor of scaling up manufacture in low- and middle-income countries, and moving to embed the right to access medicines in a new World Health Organization pandemic treaty with civil society organization participation and meaningful representation from low- and middle-income countries. Such approaches, we contend, will lead to more sustainable solutions in order to avert further health care disasters, like those seen with two distinct but related struggles-the fights for equitable access to essential medicines for HIV/AIDS and for COVID-19.</p>","PeriodicalId":46953,"journal":{"name":"Health and Human Rights","volume":"24 2","pages":"177-189"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/53/b7/hhr-24-02-177.PMC9790953.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10444647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Right to Science as a Guidepost for Fair Access to COVID-19 Vaccines: Investigating the Interpretive Role of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.","authors":"Katrina Perehudoff, Jennifer Sellin","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Facing the unmet need for new, affordable medicines for public health crises, how should states' duty to ensure that everyone shares in the benefits of science be understood in relation to pandemic vaccine supply, and how has the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights monitored the implementation of this right? In this paper, we examine the contours and content of state obligations with regard to pandemic vaccine supply under the right to science (article 15(1)(b) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), focusing on three aspects of state obligations: mobilizing public resources for developing and disseminating the benefits of scientific progress in areas of public health need; preventing unreasonably high medicines prices; and international cooperation, particularly in a globalized health emergency. The committee regularly assesses state parties' implementation of their obligations under the covenant, culminating in the issuing of concluding observations, which often serve as a basis for the next round of periodic reporting by states and can thereby direct future state action. Our analysis of the committee's concluding observations reveals that the committee has inconsistently applied its own guidance on the right to science regarding medicines and intellectual property in these monitoring exercises. These findings inform a rights-based response to medical innovation for health crises and advance the Sustainable Development Goal target on medicines research and development.</p>","PeriodicalId":46953,"journal":{"name":"Health and Human Rights","volume":"24 2","pages":"191-204"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/f4/fb/hhr-24-02-191.PMC9790945.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10444648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reparations for Harms Experienced in Residential Aged Care.","authors":"Linda Steele, Kate Swaffer","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper explores the possibility of reparations for harms suffered by people in residential aged care, focusing on experiences of people with dementia. We first explain how systemic and structural harms occur within residential aged care and outline how they constitute human rights violations. Using Australia as a case study, we then consider the limitations of court-based approaches to pursuit of redress and the current absence of redress from policy responses. We then propose an expansive and multifaceted notion of redress as reparations, where governments, residential aged care operators, medical and legal professionals, and civil society engage in ongoing recognition of harms and specific actions to prevent recurrence. By drawing on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Van Boven Principles, we consider the application to aged care of the framework of access to justice and reparations for human rights violations. This framework encompasses inclusive and accessible processes to access reparations for individuals in such forms as compensation and rehabilitation, and collective reparations, including apologies and public education. In order to ensure that reparations support the prevention of further harm in aged care, the design of redress could form part of broader government strategies directed toward increasing funding and access to community-based support, care, and accommodation, and enhancing the human rights of people with dementia.</p>","PeriodicalId":46953,"journal":{"name":"Health and Human Rights","volume":"24 2","pages":"71-83"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/de/46/hhr-24-02-071.PMC9790955.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10444652","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Emergency Care in the Occupied Palestinian Territory: A Scoping Review.","authors":"Raymond Rosenbloom, Rebecca Leff","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The development of robust emergency care systems as a critical platform for addressing the global burden of disease has been increasingly recognized by global health policy makers over the past decade. A human rights-based approach to securing the right to quality emergency care is also essential to respond to the structural and political determinants of poor health outcomes. In the occupied Palestinian territory, human rights violations have contributed to significant deficiencies in health and quality of health care. In this scoping review, we identify deficiencies in the management of high-risk presentations to emergency departments in the Palestinian health care system for traumatic injury, acute myocardial infarction, and stroke. We subsequently apply a human rights-based analysis to demonstrate how structural racism in the administration of the occupation has contributed to deficiencies in emergency care. Specifically, deficiencies in resource and system organization within the Palestinian emergency care system arise due to occupation-related restrictions on freedom of movement, the procurement of essential drugs and medical equipment, and the development of a national Palestinian health care system. Further research and intervention are needed to understand gaps in emergency care for Palestinians and, in turn, to improve the management of emergency medical and traumatic conditions through capacity building of a Palestinian emergency care system. Importantly, deconstruction of the structural determinants of poor health for Palestinians in the occupied territory is needed to improve public health and ensure the protection of human rights.</p>","PeriodicalId":46953,"journal":{"name":"Health and Human Rights","volume":"24 2","pages":"255-263"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/ce/de/hhr-24-02-255.PMC9790939.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10452147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Human Rights Implications of the Digital Revolution in Health Care in India.","authors":"Deekshitha Ganesan","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in rapidly evolving developments in digital health, and governments around the world are experimenting with different ways of introducing technological tools in the management and delivery of health care services. India, among the countries that faced one of the most serious outbreaks in the second wave of the pandemic, recently rolled out the National Digital Health Mission, which promises an integrated but federated digital architecture and a digital health ecosystem that will solve the information asymmetries of the health care sector in India. While the promises of the National Digital Health Mission are many, India's experience with using another digital tool during the pandemic-the CoWIN portal for vaccine management-alerts us to the human rights concerns of rapid introductions of digital tools to address infrastructural and governance challenges in health care. This paper attempts to take a closer look at these two digital tools and the potential human rights implications of the National Digital Health Mission, particularly for the right to health.</p>","PeriodicalId":46953,"journal":{"name":"Health and Human Rights","volume":"24 1","pages":"5-19"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/7f/8b/hhr-24-01-005.PMC9212836.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9837018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Brian Citro, Viorel Soltan, James Malar, Thandi Katlholo, Caoimhe Smyth, Ani Herna Sari, Olya Klymenko, Maxime Lunga
{"title":"Building the Evidence for a Rights-Based, People-Centered, Gender-Transformative Tuberculosis Response: An Analysis of the Stop TB Partnership Community, Rights, and Gender Tuberculosis Assessment.","authors":"Brian Citro, Viorel Soltan, James Malar, Thandi Katlholo, Caoimhe Smyth, Ani Herna Sari, Olya Klymenko, Maxime Lunga","doi":"","DOIUrl":"","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The global tuberculosis (TB) response has undergone a transformation in recent years. Calls for a paradigm shift have inspired a new focus on the importance of communities, human rights, and gender in the response. This focus has led to new approaches and innovative tools to fight an age-old disease that still affects millions each year. Notable among these tools is the Stop TB Partnership's community, rights, and gender (CRG) assessment. TB civil society and community groups, in partnership with national TB programs and others, have conducted the CRG assessment in 20 countries across four regions. Using the normative right to health framework, this article analyzes the evidence base generated by this assessment to understand the communities, legal environments, and gender dynamics at the heart of the epidemic. It describes an array of issues revealed by the assessment findings, including limited access to health services, disease-based discrimination, lack of privacy protections, and the impact of patriarchal norms on women affected by TB. Finally, this article considers how to strengthen the CRG assessment and how countries affected by TB and their donors and technical partners can leverage its findings in line with the Sustainable Development Goals and the political declaration from the first-ever United Nations High-Level Meeting on Tuberculosis.</p>","PeriodicalId":46953,"journal":{"name":"Health and Human Rights","volume":"23 2","pages":"253-267"},"PeriodicalIF":3.7,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/7d/75/hhr-23-253.PMC8694305.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39860065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}