Healthcare

January 02, 2010

Turning healthcare into an individual enforceable human right creates all kinds of legal complexities, undermines the rule of law and stifles political pluralism. Neither is there any evidence that “the right to health” has actually improved healthcare anywhere in the world – in some cases it has undermined it. 

United Nations health and crime agencies say counterfeit drugs are killing people from China to Canada and they "promote the development of new strains of viruses, parasites and bacteria ... for example in the case of malaria or HIV." In many countries their manufacture and distribution is not even illegal.

It seems that polar bears and penguins are not the only victims of global warming. As climate talks wrap up in Bali, we heard from the World Health Organization that rising temperatures are also making humans less healthy as malaria spreads northwards and heatwaves become more common. The WHO is using such claims to justify swingeing cuts in carbon emissions in order to stabilise global temperatures. But if the aim is actually to improve health--particularly in poor countries--they would be hard pushed to get it more wrong.

UN, governments' policies cause avoidable disease and suffering Many health policies promoted by intergovernmental bodies and governments in less-developed countries are counterproductive and lead to unnecessary suffering, according to a new book, Fighting the Diseases of Poverty launched here by Alternate Solutions Institute, a partner organization of Campaign for Fighting Diseases.