water and adequate sanitation facilities, are within safe physical reach, including in rural areas. • Economic accessibility: health facilities, goods and services must be affordable for all. Payment for health-care services, as well as services related to the underlying determinants of health, has to be based on the principle of equity, ensuring that these services, whether privately or publicly provided, are affordable for all, including socially disadvantaged groups. • Information accessibility: accessibility includes the right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas concerning health issues. However, accessibility of information should not impair the right to have personal health data treated with confidentiality. (c) Acceptability. All health facilities, goods and services must be respectful of medical ethics as well as respectful of the culture of individuals, minorities, peoples and communities, sensitive to gender and life-cycle requirements, as well as being designed to respect confidentiality and improve the health status of those concerned. (d) Quality. As well as being culturally acceptable, health facilities, goods and services must also be scientifically and medically appropriate and of good quality. Governments have immediate obligations in relation to the right to health. These include the guarantee that the right will be exercised without discrimination of any kind; and the obligation to take deliberate, concrete and targeted steps towards the full realisation of the right to health (progressive realisation). 120 Governments are under the obligation to respect, protect and fulfil the right to health. This requires: (a) Respect. Governments refrain from denying or limiting equal access for all persons to preventive, curative and palliative health services; abstain from enforcing discriminatory practices as a State policy; and abstain from imposing discriminatory practices relating to women’s health status and needs. (b) Protect. Governments adopt legislation or take other measures to ensure equal access to health care and health-related services provided by third parties; ensure that privatisation of the health sector does not constitute a threat to the availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of health facilities, goods and services; control the marketing of medical equipment and medicines by third parties; and to ensure that medical practitioners and other health professionals meet appropriate standards of education, skill and ethical codes of conduct. (c) Fulfil. Governments give sufficient recognition to the right to health in the national political and legal systems, preferably by way of legislative implementation, and to adopt a national health policy with a detailed plan for realising the right to health. They ensure provision of health care and equal access for all to the underlying determinants of health, such as nutritiously safe food and potable drinking water, basic sanitation and adequate housing and living conditions. Governments also take positive measures that enable and assist individuals and communities to enjoy the right to health, and undertake actions that create, maintain and restore the health of the population. Such obligations include: