Human Services News

From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:

There has been growing recognition in the international community that health should be considered a human right, but much less attention has been paid to the ensuing legal obligation to provide international assistance, says a team of authors from Médecins Sans Frontières, led by Gorik Oooms.

"Poor states can blame rich states for not honouring their obligation to provide assistance, thus leaving poor states with insufficient means to meet their core obligations," say Ooms and colleagues.

The second reason is the notion of "progressive realization," i.e. the recognition that economic, social, and cultural rights cannot be fully realized in a short period of time.

Ooms and colleagues say that a "world health insurance" could solve both of these problems by defining rights a nd duties for both rich and poor states.

The creation of the Global Fund, they say, "demonstrates the merits of ambitious thinking: the provision of antiretroviral therapy to people living with AIDS, previously dismissed as unsustainable, became widely accepted as soon as the Global Fund provided a long-term funding perspective.

Ooms and colleagues' framework for a world health insurance involves rich states paying a fair contribution and poor states having the right to assistance according to the health-care needs that they are unable to finance themselves.

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