Harvard FXB Health and Human Rights Consortium Student Essay Competition 2015. Georgetown University’s winning essay was written for the course “Business and Healthy Lifestyles,” taught by Professor Roger Magnasson, Spring 2015. Diya Uberoi The years have seen a rise in the burden of disease and death associated with tobacco. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), tobacco use kills nearly 6 million people a year.1More than 5 million of these…
The Right to Health in Indigenous Guatemala: Prevailing Historical Structures in the Context of Health Care
Harvard FXB Health and Human Rights Consortium Student Essay Competition 2015. University of Connecticut’s winning essay was written for the course “The Right to Health in Latin America,” taught by Professor César Abadía-Barrero, Spring 2015. Alexander M. Lawton Introduction Many Latin American countries have been plagued by a history of conflict between repressive regimes and powerless civilians subjected to state violence. Guatemala’s history closely follows this trend, given…
Update: Australia Bars Health and Humanitarian Workers From Speaking About Human Rights Abuses
By Alison Blaiklock Doctors, health workers, teachers and other professionals across Australia continue to demonstrate against the legislation that bars health and humanitarian workers speaking about human rights abuses. Amnesty International has said that Australia risks creating ‘prisoners of conscience’ along with “other governments who imprison those who speak out in defense of human rights, such as Saudi Arabia, Myanmar and Cuba”. Police are investigating allegations of murder, a…
Time to Rock the System? Reproductive Health Rights Still Inaccessible in Ireland
By Unarose Hogan If I asked you to envision a country where reproductive health rights are denied to the extent that women must travel to neighboring countries for abortion “asylum” in 2015; where emergency contraception without a prescription became available only in 2012; and where a woman died from maternal sepsis after doctors delayed performing an essential surgical procedure to remove an unviable fetus in 2012, what country do you…
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Book Brief: The Right to Health of the Child
The Right to Health of the Child: An Analytical Exploration of the International Normative Framework S.I. Spronk-van der Meer Intersentia ISBN 978-1-78068-272-3 345 pages $29.95 By Health and Human Rights Journal intern Antonia Chan The Right to Health of the Child: An Analytical Exploration of the International Normative Framework aims to identify standards in international law for realizing children’s right to the “highest attainable standard of health.” Author Sarah Spronk-van der…
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Dignity Matters: Applying Human Rights Frameworks to Health
Alicia Ely Yamin’s TEDx talk “Patterns of health and ill-health are not just the result of biological or behavioral factors, but they are also the results of power relations, and often – as Paul Farmer says – pathologies of power, injustices. So . . . promoting human rights should lie at the center of our responses.” Alicia Ely Yamin describes the transformative potential of applying human rights to health in her…
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A Narrow Escape in Nepal: Reflections on Disaster Responses and Better Futures
Buddha Basnyat When the earth shook violently at midday in Nepal on April 25, 2015, I was walking down my concrete staircase. As I was hurtled from side to side, I was certain I would die. Luckily, I didn’t. This was a pure privilege in the midst of so much death and destruction. An earthquake in Nepal was a “no brainer”; something that seismologists had long predicted. Even so, the…
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President Obama’s Clean Power Plan is a Win for Health Rights
By Antonia Chan On Monday, President Obama unveiled a landmark plan to combat climate change: new regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that require states to meet carbon emission reduction standards based on their individual energy consumption. If the regulations go into effect, power plants would be directed to reduce carbon emissions by 32% overall from 2005 levels by 2030. Obama’s Clean Power Plan has far-reaching implications for public…
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Lessons from the Chilean earthquake: How a human rights framework facilitates disaster response
MaryCatherine Arbour, Kara Murray, Felipe Arriet, Cecilia Moraga, Miguel Cordero Vega Health and Human Rights 13/1 Published June 2011 Abstract The earthquake of 2010 in Chile holds important lessons about how a rights-based public health system can guide disaster response to protect vulnerable populations. This article tells the story of Chile Grows With You (Chile Crece Contigo), an intersectoral system created three years before the earthquake for protection of child…
Physicians Trained to Work with Torture Survivors can add Critical Expertise in Jails
Ross MacDonald, Zachary Rosner, Homer Venters Since the United Nations Convention Against Torture was adopted in 1984, training physicians to care for survivors of torture has become a valuable addition to traditional medical education. Throughout the world, there are approximately 50 programs and clinics dedicated to caring for survivors of torture, with many more medical and mental health professionals caring for these patients in other settings. While the focus…