Access to medicines vital to achieving right to health

by Kanaga Raja

The UN noted with concern that, for millions of people throughout the world, the full and equal enjoyment of the right to health remains a distant goal.

The United Nations Human Rights Council, in a resolution adopted on July 1, has recognized that access to medicines is 'one of the fundamental elements in achieving progressively the full realization of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.'

In a resolution, orally revised and adopted without a vote, the Council has decided to convene a panel discussion at its thirty-fourth session in March next year 'to exchange views on good practices and key challenges relevant to access to medicines as one of the fundamental elements of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, taking into account all relevant reports, and that the discussion shall be fully accessible to persons with disabilities.'

Brazil, introducing the draft resolution on behalf of Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand and some 72 additional co-sponsors, said, for millions of people throughout the world, the full enjoyment of the human right to health still remains an elusive goal.

Regular

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), at least one-third of the world's population has no regular access to medicines.

"It is our firm understanding that no effort should be spared to realize this right for all," said Brazil. Health is a fundamental human right, indispensable to the enjoyment of many other human rights and necessary for living a life in dignity, it said.

According to Brazil, the present initiative is aimed at reaffirming access to medicines as a fundamental element in the realization of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standards of physical and mental health. It requests a panel discussion to exchange views on good practice and key challenges relevant to access to medicines to take place during the next March session (of the Human Rights Council).

Population

India said, according to the WHO World Medicines Situation Report of 2011, one-third of the global population has no regular access to medicines.

India underlined that for millions of people around the world, the lack of access to safe, affordable and quality medicines remains a major barrier in realizing the full right to health. The challenges are no longer limited to developing countries or to the so-called neglected diseases, which is affecting people in the Global North as well, stretching the health budgets of all governments and impacting frequently to common diseases like hepatitis and cancer.

"This indeed is a serious human rights issue," India emphasized. It said, the existing global framework does not allow the fruits of medical innovation to be equitably shared, in particular, to those most in need. "It has only resulted in skyrocketing prices for life-saving medicines and vaccines, promoted discriminatory access to medicines based on geographic location or economic status and further widened the health inequities." The increasing healthcare costs have become the leading cause of induced poverty pushing nearly 150 million people into impoverishment every year. Moreover, the innovation model that thrives on the current system has failed to address the health R&D needs of developing countries, said India.

Diseases

This is evident from the lack of any new medicines and vaccines for long known infectious diseases like TB and malaria, which continue to take a huge public health toll. India noted that a number of Council resolutions have reaffirmed the right of member states to give primacy to public health over trade and intellectual property considerations as enshrined in the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health.

"We need to once again place the human rights dimension of access to medicines at the centre of our efforts to create favourable conditions at the national, regional and international levels to ensure the full realization of the right to health and health-related goals of Agenda 2030," it said.

Standards

In a general comment, the United Kingdom, while joining the consensus on the resolution, said it found that a number of provisions in the text were problematic. For example, the UK said, while it fully supports the right of everyone's enjoyment of the highest attainable standards of physical and mental health, it did not recognize its link with access to medicines as set out in operational paragraph 1 (of the resolution).

Switzerland said, it had some reservations about the resolution. It fully supports its aim, i. e. the full enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health for all. Though it joined the consensus, Switzerland said, it would have liked to see a more well balanced resolution, and in this context drew attention to preambular paragraph 10, and operational paragraphs 3, 4 and 5 of the draft resolution. Switzerland maintained that the reference to the price of medicines in operational paragraphs 3 and 5 are an inadequate simplification. Patents and prices are not directly linked, it claimed.

The prices of medicines depend on a number of different factors including import taxes, the national medicines supply system, and the role of intermediaries, it said. In an intervention, the Netherlands, on behalf of the European Union member states of the Human Rights Council, explained that it is fully committed to the full realization of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.

Inventors

The assumption that the right of inventors are the single, or even the main, impediment to innovation and access to health, overlooks a key finding of the 2012 joint WHO/WTO/WIPO study on promoting access to medical technologies and innovation, that the lack of access to medical technologies is rarely due entirely to one single determinant, the EU maintained. It recognized the participation of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in the expert advisory group supporting the Panel. The Council noted with concern that, for millions of people throughout the world, the full and equal enjoyment of the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health remains a distant goal.

Poverty

It was concerned about the inter-relatedness between poverty and the realization of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, in particular, the fact that ill health can be both a cause and a consequence of poverty.

It recognized that universal health coverage implies that "all people have access without discrimination to nationally determined sets of the needed promotive, preventive, curative, palliative, and rehabilitative essential health services, and essential, safe, affordable, efficacious, and quality medicines and vaccines, while ensuring that the use of these services does not expose users to financial hardship, with a special emphasis on the poor, vulnerable, and marginalized segments of the population."

- Third World Network Features.