• fostering recognition of factors favouring
positive health results, e.g. research and
provision of information;
• ensuring that health services are culturally
appropriate and that health care staff
are trained to recognise and respond
to the specific needs of vulnerable or
marginalised groups;
• ensuring that the State meets its
obligations in the dissemination of
appropriate information relating to healthy
lifestyles and nutrition, harmful traditional
practices and the availability of services;
and
• supporting people in making informed
choices about their health.
Governments have a core obligation to ensure
the satisfaction of, at the very least, minimum
essential levels of rights, including essential
primary health care. This includes ensuring:
• access to health facilities, goods and
services on a non-discriminatory basis,
especially for vulnerable or marginalised
groups;
• access to the minimum essential food
which is nutritionally adequate and safe;
• access to basic shelter, housing and
sanitation, and an adequate supply of safe
and potable water; and
• equitable distribution of all health facilities,
goods and services.
Governments are also required to:
• ensure reproductive, maternal (pre-natal
as well as post-natal) and child health care;
• provide immunisation against the major
infectious diseases occurring in the
community;
• provide education and access to
information concerning the main health
problems in the community, including
methods of preventing and controlling
them; and
• provide appropriate training for health
personnel, including education on health
and human rights.
In determining whether an action or an omission
amounts to a violation of the right to health,
it is important to distinguish the inability from
the unwillingness of a government to comply
with its obligations. A government which is
unwilling to use the maximum of its available
resources for the realisation of the right to
health is in violation of its obligations. If
resource constraints render it impossible for a
government to comply fully with its obligations,
it has the burden of justifying that every effort
has nevertheless been made to use all available
resources at its disposal in order to satisfy, as a
matter of priority, the obligations. A government
cannot justify its non-compliance with the core
obligations set out above.
ICESCR clearly imposes a duty on each
government to take whatever steps are
necessary to ensure that everyone has access
to health facilities, goods and services so that
they can enjoy, as soon as possible, the highest
attainable standard of physical and mental
health. This requires the adoption of a national
strategy to ensure to all the enjoyment of the
right to health, based on human rights principles
which define the objectives of that strategy, and
the formulation of policies and corresponding
right to health indicators and benchmarks. The
national health strategy should also identify the
resources available to attain defined objectives,
as well as the most cost-effective way of using
those resources.
• take measures to prevent, treat and control
epidemic and endemic diseases;
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