Human Rights to Health and Obligations in the Developing World Context

This essay delves into the concept of human rights to health, emphasizing its significance as a fundamental ethical principle. It begins by defining the right to health, encompassing access to healthcare, sanitation, adequate food, and a clean environment. The essay then explores the practical implications of this right, particularly in developing countries, where healthcare disparities and violations are prevalent. It highlights specific examples, such as the challenges faced by marginalized communities in India and the poor working conditions in Asian countries, where access to healthcare is limited due to discrimination, lack of resources, and inadequate labor laws. The essay poses the research question: "Does the idea of a human right to health help illuminate the obligations to assist people in poor health in the developing world?" and analyzes the failures to ensure human rights to health and recommends how different components need to be incorporated in the design of healthcare services so that all people irrespective of class, creed and religion, enjoy equal human right to health, and develop better quality life.

Running head: HUMAN RIGHTS
HUMAN RIGHTS
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Abstract:
Health is the fundamental human right. World Health Organization had described human
right to health as the “The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of
the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political
belief, economic or social condition” (Acharya et al. 2017). From the day one of the origin of
this concept of human health ethics of human right to health, WHO had centralized this principle
and had worked in close associations with the United Nations to ensure that people of all nations
have equal access to quality healthcare services and live better quality life. In simple terms, the
right to health for all people mainly means that everyone should have the access to the health
service they need, irrespective of the time and place of the need, without suffering from any form
of financial hardship.
Human health ethics and values state that no human beings should suffer more or die
because they are poor or they are from other cultural background or because they cannot access
the healthcare services, they need. Researchers are of the opinion that good health is mainly
determined by different basic human rights that need to include safe drinking water and
sanitation, having proper access to nutritious foods, adequate education, housing and safe
working conditions (Haberland and Rogow 2015). The human right to health should be ensuring
that everyone should be having control over their own health and body and should include access
to different sexual and reproductive information and services and being free from violence and
discrimination.
Therefore, it becomes extremely important for every nation to assure that their healthcare
services are designed in ways by which human right to health can be maintained and people of

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all strata live higher qualities of life successfully. However, it is mainly noted that in the
developing countries the healthcare services are not designed appropriately and that not all
people can enjoy equal rights in seeking services from the healthcare professionals. This
incidence is more common in the low socio-economic people, culturally background people and
people living in the remote areas. It has huge impact on the quality of their lives making them
suffer more than the well-to-do classes. Hence, the research question is “Does the idea of a
human right to health help illuminate the obligations to assist people in poor health in the
developing world?”
The assignment will first help in illuminating the concept of human right to health.
Following this, it will highlight various cases in the developing countries where the human right
to health had been breached and violated leading to increased suffering and poor quality health
of [people. Following this, the assignment will recommend how different important components
need to be inculcated in designing the healthcare services so that all people irrespective of class,
creed and religion, enjoy equal human right to health, and develop better quality life.

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Human right to health can be explained as the ethical principle that shows that everyone
has the right towards highest attainable standard of both mental and physical health. Such
principle includes access to all forms of medical services, sanitation, decent housing, adequate
food as well as clean environment. The human right to health has three specific principles that
every developing nations need to incorporate in their strategies as the foundation principles.
Human right to health needs to guarantee a system of protection for all (Acharya et al. 2017).
Moreover, everyone should have the right to the healthcare and need to have access to living
conditions that enable them to be healthy. This should be including adequate food, housing and
even healthy environment. Healthcare must also be provided as a public good for all and should
be financed publicly and equitably (Drahos et al. 2017). The human right to health care actually
means that all healthcare centers like clinics, hospitals, medicines as well as services of the
doctors should be accessible, acceptable, available as well as good quality for everyone on an
equitable basis where and whenever required.
However, still in the developing countries, the situations for ensuring human rights to
healthcare are not met successfully. Equality and non-discrimination are the two main aspects
that the “human right to health” needs to include in their strategies to meet up the healthcare
needs of the poorer section. Human rights standards and principles define all the individuals as
equal and that everyone should be entitled to their human rights without discrimination of any
kinds like that of race, sex, color, age, ethnicity, religion , language, political as well as other
opinion irrespective of national or political origin (Chandra et al. 2015). They should not face
discrimination based on disability, birth, physical or mental disability, health status like HIV or
aids, sexual orientation or any other status defined under the international laws. In the developing

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countries, inequality and discrimination is seen to be prevalent which had impeded people to
enjoy equal rights and access to the healthcare services in the nation.
A recent study was conducted to find out how different countries were responding to
“rights to human health” principles developed by WHO and were contributing in development of
a disease free nation. An interesting data was obtained about the healthcare services designed for
HIV affected people in the developing nations. It has been found that expensive and targeted
HIV-AIDs treatment programs had successfully reached large number of people in the rich
and developed countries. This had been mainly possible because of the coinciding of the viable
pharmaceutical markets with that of the well-resourced healthcare systems (Haberland and
Rogow 2015). However, the scenario had been quite different in the developing nations. In the
majority of the developing countries, researchers have found that self-financing markets and
robust healthcare systems are not present in place. Therefore, millions of poor people who are
not having access and financial stability to afford expensive treatments are perishing for the
want of treatment. The researchers have found out that such treatments could indeed be made
available if adequate resources were brought to fear. This had made World Health Organization
conclude that despite their enormous advocacy efforts as well as their commitment towards some
public and even private sectors, there remains the need for the additional strategies to confront
the HIV disorder (Mehta et al. 2015).
An interesting BBC report had shown how the nation of India had failed to overcome
the issues of untouchability, discrimination and prejudices that had always acted as barriers in
ensuring “rights to human health” in the different healthcare services. The report shows that
although the United Nations had talked about the importance for ensuring human right to health
to all people of every developing nation, there have been no successful attempts in many

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countries. India has severely failed in eliminating the concept of casts and untouchability.
Although the metro cities, the capitals, and other urban areas are gradually overcoming the
discrimination and stigmatization, the sub-urban and rural areas experience strong prejudices.
For centuries, the Dalits have been outcast from the Indian society and had been often labeled as
the “untouchables”. Numerous laws have been introduced since 1850 for effective protection of
the Dalits as well as to end the caste-based discrimination as well as segregation that starts from
the very early age at the school (Fussler et al. 2017). The BBC had recovered a report where it
as seen found that colored wristbands were being used in the schools for differentiating between
the students from the different castes. Majority of the Dalits are often found to be segregated to
the core remote rural areas that are quite far away from the higher caste living areas and also
do not have proper healthcare services in the areas. Secondly, the Dalits are not provided access
to the safe drinking water. This is often seen to result in different forms of fatal illness like that
of malaria, cholera as well as diarrhea. These disorders had also been also seen to severely affect
the child mortality rate as diarrhea has been found to be the second leading cause of the child
death in the world. They are not allowed to access the healthcare services as the concept of
untouchability makes them to keep away from the general citizen (Rotich and Tugumisirise
2017). Moreover, the humiliation and discrimination they had faced over the years had made
them adapted to the inhuman behavior from the society and they do not want to experience it
further from the healthcare sectors. They are not allowed to have equal access to the healthcare
services and are often discriminated by the professionals as well. Therefore, human rights to
health are severely violated for this people in the nation. About 167 million people face the
injustice everyday in the nation that is about twice the number of people that live in many of the
developed countries as well.

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The growth of the population in Asia had slowed down to the rate of 5.7% from 6.3% in
the year 2016 to that of 2017. Asia is seen to be grappling with the different issues of prosperity
as well as that of the human rights. It has been home to some of the world’s poorest countries
and had been currently considered to be the hotbed of crime, corruption, various types of
exploitations of the human rights, dignity and principles, weak monitoring as well as the
implementation of the regulation of law and paying no attention to of the environment (Ottersen
et al. 2014). Severe violations of human rights to health had been found in the different countries
in the different neighboring countries in Asia through the poor working conditions and
absolute lack of safety maintenance. One of the greatest barriers to quality health life of the
labor classes in these countries is the poorly maintained and weakened implementation of the
labor laws and the monitoring. This had often resulted the different organizations in exploiting
their workers along with the high level of disrespect for health and protection. The human rights
to human health had been completely violated as none of the many of the organizations
harboring the labor workforce had shown a high level of disregard for the health as well as safety
concerns of the employees (Reich et al. 2016). Studies have shown that the workers who are
mostly from the low socio-economic background or are rural migrants have to ensure
substandard working conditions and even longer hours of work. They are even seen to be
working for seven days a week without any legal defense and even be exposed to different health
hazards. They are even seen to have no access to the healthcare services and no interventions are
taken up by the employers to help them to have proper access to healthcare issues as well. Not
developing proper health safety systems and not allowing enough scope for the laborers to enjoy
a healthy quality life through equal access to healthcare opportunities is indeed a violation to
human rights to health and need to be prosecuted under the law.

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In the year 2013, an illicitly built eight-storey clothing factory in the nation of
Bangladesh had collapsed and this had resulted to the death of 1100 workers along with the
injuring of the 2000 people and 104 people are still found to be missing. Half of the international
brands who were found to be linked with the tragedy are yet to pay into the $40 million
compensation fund that had been set up by the UN due to the violation of human health to rights
for different survivors and dependents (Lundgren and Amin 2015). Another incident had been
also reported. In the Northeast India, about 100 deaths due to starvation between the ages of
2015 to 2016 have been highlighted due to the poor working condition of the tea workers at the
closed tea plantations in the west Bengal. The tea-garden employees were mostly tribal in origin
and belonged to poor –socio-economic classes. They are seen to suffer from isolation as well as
inability to access to different healthcare services and these results in aggravation of the
situations further. However, the state government did not accept their inability to access
healthcare centers and rather contended that the deaths were due to “prolonged malnutrition”.
Striking examples can be provided to show how violation of human rights to health had
become clearly visible in the different African countries and where the poorer sections of the
society are mostly vulnerable. The biggest irony had been pointed out by the WHO's Director
General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. WHO general director had clearly noted the tendency
of the African leaders to leave their country, travel to the developed countries for their own
healthcare treatments, and then come back to their own country (Abuya et al. 2015). This states
that they are themselves aware of the need for improvement of the healthcare services in their
own nations in ways by which all, the sections of the society can have equal access to quality
healthcare services that meets their needs and requirements. Therefore, WHO had asked the
nations to develop a focus on all the different types of building blocks of health system that

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would align with the needs of all people the nation irrespective of their socio-economic
background. The General director had stated that "I do not like the fact that Africa is the only
continent on this planet in which, when its heads of state are sick, they have to be taken
care of in another country - or another continent for that matter". He further added, “The
only time when we will say the health systems in Africa are working is if everybody,
including heads of state, is able to get treatment within the continent" (Mokdad et al.
2016). They had raised questions about the safety and quality of the healthcare services that are
provided to the general ordinary citizens to the nation as the leaders are not themselves sure of
the quality of healthcare services they would get when they would be ill.
The different studies that had been conducted on the different nations in the continent of
Africa. This had shown that healthcare access is widely perceived to be about how far the
individuals have to travel for getting help from the healthcare facility. The researchers have also
stated that although physical distance is one important hindrance, access to healthcare by all
people irrespective of the backgrounds mainly transcend different geographical factors. The
socio-cultural and the socio-economic forces are seen to play important determining roles on the
distribution of healthcare services across the nations (Cotlear et al. 2015). Another set of study
had supported the claim and had stated that other greatest impediment to healthcare
accessibility in the country is the higher prevalence of poverty. They have argued that although
individuals who are living near to the healthcare services cannot always avail the care and
service from professionals from the hospitals due to the cost, as they cannot afford it always.
WHO had stated that Africa is suffering from the grip of tuberculosis, different non-
communicable disorder and even poor access of mental healthcare services. WHO's regional
director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti had confirmed that the health inequalities and

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violation of the human right to health are fast growing on most of the African countries owing to
the social gap between the poor and the rich (Buse et al. 2015). However, he had also accepted
the fact that funding was quite less for the healthcare services and the different issues faced by
the people from different backgrounds in accessing healthcare services can be resolved by proper
allocation of funds and other resources.
Therefore, the different developing nations have to ensure that they are taking effective
evidence based interventions that can assure effective healthcare services and support systems
for protecting their human right to health (Beck et al. 2018). A healthcare system should be
designed in every developing nation should incorporate few important components that would
ensure human right to health to every people irrespective of the socio-economic background.
The first component is the universal access. Researchers are of the opinion that access
to health care need to be universal and should be assured for all on the unbiased basis. Healthcare
services should be such that it is affordable and all-inclusive care for everyone and needs to be
physically available where and whenever required (Wronka, 2016).
The second component is called the availability. Proper adequate healthcare
infrastructures (community health facilities, hospitals, clinics, trained healthcare professionals),
goods (like drugs, equipments) and services (like metal healthcare, primary services) need to be
available for all people in every geographical area in every communities.
The third community is called the acceptability and dignity. The different healthcare
institutions and the providers of health should be respecting the dignity or people and assure a
culturally competent care to the people. The care should be such that it would be responsive to
the needs and requirements of the people based in the gender, age, culture, language and even the

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dissimilar ways of living and their respective abilities. Respecting medical moral principles and
assuring maintenance of confidentiality becomes important(Okafur et al. 2015).
The fourth component is called the quality of the care. The healthcare that needs to be
provided should be medically appropriate and should be of high quality. This should be guided
by the different quality standards and control mechanisms. Moreover, it should be provided in a
timely, safe and patient centered manner to ensure best health outcomes of the patients.
The fifth component is called the non-discrimination. The healthcare that should be
provided to people should be without any forms of discrimination about the health status, race,
ethnicity, sexuality, disability, religion, language, income, national origin and even social status
(Schaper 2016).
The sixth component is the transparency. Researchers are of the opinion that health
information needs to be easily accessible for every person. it should be also enabling people in
protecting their health and also claim different types of quality health services. It is also seen
advised that the institutions, which participate in organizing, financing or delivering health care,
must operate in a transparent procedures (Gilbert et al. 2015).
The seventh component is the participation. Studies are of the opinion that in order to
ensure human rights to health, communities and individuals should be able to participate and
take active roles in decision making regarding aspects that affect their health. This should be
including organization and implementation of healthcare services, decisions and policies in the
nations (Thornicroft et al. 2016)

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The eighth component is called accountability. Private companies and public agencies
must be held accountable for effective protection of the right to health. This should be assured
through enforceable standards, regulations, and independent compliance monitoring.
From the above discussion, it becomes clear that people belonging to low socioeconomic
background, different racial and culturally different groups, migrant populations and many others
cannot enjoy equal human rights to healthcare. This is more prominent in the developing
countries then the developed countries. Therefore, it is extremely important for the healthcare
organizations and the government to design healthcare services that align with important
components of human rights and dignity. Accountability, transparency, participation, universal
access, non0doscrimination and many others aspects should be inculcated in the healthcare
services for ensuring that all people of all strata can enjoy best healthcare services.