Iranian Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine

Mendeley  

Zotero  

Vahdaninia V, Said Mosavi M S, Vahdaninia M A, Vosoogh Moghaddam A. Health as Human Right; Legal Narrative of “Governance For Health” Logic. IJMEHM 2020; 13 :1-18
URL: http://ijme.tums.ac.ir/article-1-6191-en.html

The "Legal language" has provided a strong supportive argument for right to health advocacy. In such a way that, human rights rules has been established as the most important globalized political value at the heart of the theory and practice of public health discourse. Its power of enforceability guaranties fair distribution of health resources in each country. At the same time, the right to health, the “Right-claim” which has been identified by international and national documents  requires preconditions that will not come true without the proper cultural, social, economic, and political infrastructures, in general the factors shaping the "context of people's lives”. In other words, a legal reasoning for right to health can be followed by an argument for the right to health determinants. Therefore, by adopting an epistemological approach, this paper presents a legal narrative of “governance for health”. This paper creates a new perspective on the "right to health" debates. Additionally, it provides powerful arguments that health policy should be based on a perception of factors with major impacts on the people health and what have being described as "health hazard", "health protector", and "health promoter". However, this claim for right to health as an "individual enforceable right" is criticized, and there may be theoretical and practical obstacles to the full realization of this human right.