Blogs
Advancing the Right to Health in the AIDS Response: An Evolving Movement and an Uncertain Future
Benjamin Mason Meier, Rebekah Thomas, and Kent Buse
UNAIDS World AIDS Day launch 2017
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) is focusing its 2017 World AIDS Day campaign on the right to health. This groundbreaking campaign, My…
Patent Fighters: Taking on Big Pharma
Fran Quigley
It was at a street protest for access to medicines when Priti Krishtel and Tahir Amin realized that they needed to go beyond street protests. Krishtel and Amin were both young lawyers who had walked away from lucrative law firm jobs,…
Rural-Urban Migrants in China: Mental Health Challenges and Denial of Rights
Jason Hung
Devised in 1950s, hukou is a residency registration system that controls internal rural-urban migration within China. Then in 1978 the Chinese Communist Party started a series of socioeconomic reforms, including the establishment of…
WHO Focus on Human Rights: Will it Extend to Neglected Tropical Diseases?
Joseph J. Amon
When Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was elected as WHO Director-General earlier this year, there was a sense among people working on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) that there may be new attention, and resources, for efforts at…
In the Name of Ujaama, Let Human Rights Activists Return to their Families
Allan Maleche
A protest march is taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Tuesday 24 October, calling for the release of human rights activists and lawyers who are being held in jail in Tanzania, unlawfully. Sibongile Ndashe and 12 other persons…
What Price is the Philippines Human Rights Commission Budget Reprieve?
Red Thaddeus D. Miguel
“I don’t care about human rights, believe me.” So said Philippine President Rodrigo R. Duterte (pictured left) whose “war on drugs” has not slowed down despite risks of weakening the government. According to the Philippine…
Ignoring Social Rights Results in Human Tragedies – Paul Hunt
Carmel Williams
The first UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health has published a report on ‘social rights’ and the need to frame social issues in human rights language.
Professor Paul Hunt says the cost of ignoring social rights is having…
Neglected Tools: Access to Medicines for NTDs in Canada and the United States
Adam Houston and Catherine-Marie Blais
The recent approval by the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) of benznidazole to treat Chagas disease in children highlights some of the frequently overlooked barriers to treating neglected tropical diseases…
Chile Celebrates its First Steps Towards Fulfilling Abortion Rights
Lidia Casas and Lieta Vivaldi
Despite its recognition for the democratic institutions that had been built before and since the Pinochet dictatorship, Chile was until Monday among a small and disgraced club of nations that treated women as less than…
To Heal Humankind: The Right to Health in History
Book Review by Fran Quigley
Although I have not met Adam Gaffney, I feel indebted to him. Through his new book, To Heal Humankind: The Right to Health in History (Routledge), Gaffney, a physician and instructor at Harvard Medical School and active…