The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ii) Physical accessibility: health facilities, goods and services must be within safe physical reach for all sections of the population, especially vulnerable or marginalized groups, such as ethnic minorities and indigenous populations, women, children, adolescents, older persons, persons with disabilities and persons with HIV/AIDS. Accessibility also implies that medical services and underlying determinants of health, such as safe and potable water and adequate sanitation facilities, are within safe physical reach, including in rural areas. Accessibility further includes adequate access to buildings for persons with disabilities. (iii) Economic accessibility (affordability): 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. Equity demands that poorer households should not be disproportionately burdened with health expenses as compared to richer households. (iv) 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 and culturally appropriate, i.e. 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. This requires, inter alia, skilled medical personnel, scientifically approved and unexpired drugs and hospital equipment, safe and potable water, and adequate sanitation. 14 In General Comment No. 3, the Committee drew attention to the obligation of all States Parties to take steps, individually and through international assistance and cooperation, especially economic and technical, towards the full realization of the rights recognized in the Covenant, such as the right to health. In the spirit of article 56 of the Charter of the United Nations, the specific provisions of the Covenant (articles 12, 2.1, 22 and 23) and the Alma-Ata Declaration on primary health care, States Parties should recognize the essential role of international cooperation and comply with their commitment to take joint and separate action to achieve the full realization of the right to health. In this regard, States Parties are referred to the Alma-Ata Declaration which proclaims that the existing gross inequality in the health status of the people, particularly between developed and developing countries, as well as within countries, is politically, socially and economically unacceptable and is, therefore, of common concern to all countries. The human right to health is recognized in numerous international instruments that include Article 25.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5 (e) (iv) of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Articles 11.1 (f) and 12 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and in article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. According to these international human rights instruments, the generic right to health encompasses a number of more specific health rights including the right to maternal, child and reproductive health; the right to healthy and safe workplace environments; the right to prevention, treatment and control of diseases; and the right to health facilities, goods and services. 1.4 Right to Work In the concept of human rights, the right to work recognizes work as something to which each and every individual is entitled. The right to work means, first of all, the right to participate in the producing and servicing activities of human society and the right to participate in the benefits accrued through these joint activities to an extent that guarantees an adequate standard of living. The right to work thus ensures that nobody is excluded from the economic sphere. 15