Sofía Charvel, Fernanda Cobo, Silvana Larrea, and Juliana Baglietto Abstract Priority setting is the process through which a country’s health system establishes the drugs, interventions, and treatments it will provide to its population. Our study evaluated the priority-setting legal instruments of Brazil, Costa Rica, Chile, and Mexico to determine the extent to which each reflected the following elements: transparency, relevance, review and revision, and oversight and supervision, according to Norman…
Revisiting Health Rights Litigation and Access to Medications in Costa Rica: Preliminary Evidence from the Cochrane Collaboration Reform
Olman Rodríguez Loaiza, Sigrid Morales, Ole Frithjof Norheim, and Bruce M. Wilson Abstract In response to the incremental creation of an expansive constitutional right to health in Costa Rica, the country’s rights-friendly constitutional chamber of the Supreme Court (known as the Sala IV) unleashed a flood of litigation for medications, treatments, and other health care issues. This development was met by widespread criticism from within the health sector, which complained…
Realizing the Fundamental Right to Health through Litigation: The Colombian Case
Aquiles Ignacio Arrieta-Gómez Abstract Colombia has made significant progress in the recognition and protection of the right to health. Using litigation—a structural element of the democratic Colombian design—many people have had to fight in order to enjoy effective access to health care. Such litigation has proven a pacific and democratic way to protect a constitutional principle: health as a fundamental and justiciable right. In 2008, in the wake of thousands…
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EDITORIAL Health in the Courts of Latin America
Octávio Luiz Motta Ferraz To address any complex issue in a large and diverse geographical region of the world is always a daunting and risky task. Latin America is no exception. Despite the semblance of uniformity that the use of the term “Latin American” often misleadingly imparts, the truth is that there is no such thing as a homogeneous bloc of countries occupying the territory running from the border between…
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Individual Health Care Litigation in Brazil through a Different Lens: Strengthening Health Technology Assessment and New Models of Health Care Governance
Danielle Da Costa Leite Borges Abstract This article investigates policy and bureaucracy changes provoked by individual litigation for health care rights in Brazil, especially the one regarding access to medicines, looking at the effects it produced in relation to health technology assessment (HTA) and health care governance. The article first contextualizes the social, legal, and political conditions for the development of individual litigation for health care rights in Brazil. Then…
How the Uruguayan Judiciary Shapes Access to High-Priced Medicines: A Critique through the Right to Health Lens
Lucía Berro Pizzarossa, Katrina Perehudoff, and José Castela Forte Abstract Uruguay has witnessed an ever-increasing number of domestic court claims for high-priced medicines despite its comprehensive universal coverage of pharmaceuticals. In response to the current national debate and development of domestic legislation concerning high-priced medicines, we review whether Uruguayan courts adequately interpret the state’s core obligations to provide essential medicines and ensure non-discriminatory access in line with the right to…
Can Judges Ration with Compassion? A Priority-Setting Rights Matrix
Christopher Newdick Abstract How should courts supervise health service resource allocation? Although practice varies widely, four broad approaches can be represented on a matrix comparing, on two axes, (a) individual-community rights and (b) substantive-procedural remedies. Examples from each compartment of the matrix are discussed and, although the community-procedural approach is recommended as a general rule, a range of other responses within the matrix may also be desirable. Introduction All over…
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Addressing Inequity: Neglected Tropical Diseases and Human Rights
Nina Sun and Joseph J. Amon Abstract Twenty neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are currently recognized by the World Health Organization. They affect over one billion people globally and are responsible for significant morbidity, mortality, poverty, and social stigmatization. In May 2013, the World Health Assembly adopted a resolution calling on member states to intensify efforts to address NTDs, with the goal of reaching previously established targets for the elimination or…
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FOREWORD Embodying Law and Embedding Public Health with the Voices of Those Affected: Ending NTDs by 2030
Alice Cruz In the mid-nineteenth century, when public health was establishing itself as a scientific field, the great physician-scientist Rudolph Virchow wrote, “Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing more than medicine on a larger scale.”[1] With this statement, Virchow highlighted the interplay between human health and society. A century and a half later, the looping effect—that is, the fundamental relationship between society and health, between culture and…
EDITORIAL “Equipping Practitioners”: Linking Neglected Tropical Diseases and Human Rights
Joseph J. Amon and David G. Addiss In 2007, Paul Hunt, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health, and colleagues published a report entitled Neglected Diseases: A Human Rights Analysis. In introducing the report, the authors wrote: The human rights implications of neglected diseases, and the contribution that human rights can make to addressing neglected diseases, have not been given the attention they deserve. This report aims…