Should a community have to choose between the right to practice their culture and the right to health? The right to health is a highly contestable right, especially when it may conflict with traditional rights or local customs. In the article “Health Systems and the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health,” Paul Hunt and Gunilla Backman discuss the components of a health system and how to implement it and right to the ‘highest attainable health.’ Notably among the components, Hunt and Backman argue that there is a need for “international cooperation [to actualize] health as a global public good,” a “respect of cultural differences,” and balances between “competing human rights” (83-86). Many irreconcilable conflicts arose, when Hunt and Backman applied their framework to the violation of the right to health, which health committee members discussed in Bettina Shell-Duncan’s article “From Health to Human Rights: Female Genital Cutting (FGC) and the Politics of Intervention.” Shell-Duncan’s article covers the implications of realizing FGC as a right to health because of its cultural importance. In this paper, I will use the health issue of female genital cutting to explain how actualizing “the highest attainable standard of health” as defined by Hunt and Backman can lead to many conflicts that their framework fails to resolve.
The Hunt and Backman’s article explained a right-to-health approach that would serve to improve health systems. Their article presents the position that health is a human right, which local and national stakeholders must hold to the “highest attainable standard,” based on assumption on the World Health Organization’s Constitution (1946) and the Declaration of Alma-Ata (1978). In this paper, ...
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.... Shell-Duncan did not expound on the ‘pressure’ applied to those countries. I charge that ‘pressure’ in any form may lead to resisting the wanted results because the impacted communities would resent the intervention methods. Although, critics of my interpretation could argue that some form of ‘pressure’ is necessary to actualize agreements and change. Yet, I argue the oppressed could view outsiders as interference, whereas nations that are more powerful could start to control progressively more of lower-income countries.
Works Cited
Hunt, Paul and Gunilla Backman. “Health Systems and the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health.” Health and Human Rights 10.1 (2008): 81-92. Print.
Shell-Duncan, Bettina. “From Health to Human Rights: Female Genital Cutting and the Politics of Intervention.” American Anthropologist 110.2 (2008): 225-236. Print.
Female genital mutilation is mostly practiced in Islamic and African cultures, claiming young girls as t...
Internationally, issues revolving around the female body and reproduction are extremely controversial. For a woman, her body is a very private matter. At the same time, however, a woman's body and her reproduction rights are the center of attention in many public debates. Several questions regarding women's reproductive rights remain unanswered. How much control do women have over their bodies? What kind of rules can be morally imposed upon women? And who controls the bodies of women? Although the public continues to debate these topics, certain conclusions can been made concerning women and their reproductive rights. An undeniable fact is that government has a large degree of control over female reproductive organs. All around the world, time and time again, several national governments have implemented policies, enacted laws, and denied women control over their reproductive organs. Several governments have crossed the border between intimate and public matters concerning women's reproductive organs, by making laws about contraceptives, abortion, and family planning programs.
Rather, Buchanan proposed the field of public health to gain the public’s trust, needs to expand individual autonomy by promoting social justice while discussing the common portrayals of justice. The rationale behind Buchanan’s work is to bring understanding to an ethical issue of paternalism v. autonomy in public health. Paternalism can be justified given it protects the interest of the people and autonomy is an individual’s freedom from external control or influence. There are valid arguments for both sides, but in public health, paternalism is very useful situationally, while autonomy must be preserved and respected as it is an individual given right. Aiming for an ideal range where public health policy and individual freedom can overlap, no matter the inconsistencies, is the
This was launched to help health and social settings to implement human rights based approaches to improve the standard of care given to services users and how they deliver the service. This helps to reduce the risk of abuse as it helps to implement human right into practice and services, placing more value on them. this helps to reduce an unintentional abuse and it helps the organisations to recognition when someone’s rights are not being met and to take action to prevent this from happening, increasing the standard of care people receive and reduce the risk of abuse,
Parrot is an expert in cultural practices and the risks encountered in attempting to change them. She is currently writing a book on the topic with Nina Cummings, health educator and victim advocate at Gannett University Health Services at Cornell. Forsaken Figures: The Global Brutalization, Oppression, and Violence against Women catalogues, describes, and analyzes all manner of violence, subjugation, and gendercide against women from a global perspective. Many practices and cultural norms around the world, such as female genital mutilation, sexual slavery, and feticide/infanticide of female babies, are perceived as wrong by outside cultures, Parrot says. She is interested in determining how outside policymakers might begin to address what they see as problems when their own cultural language is vastly different from that of the communities and countries in which the practices are tolerated or even supported.
Female Circumcision: Rite of Passage Or Violation of Rights?" Guttmacher Institute: Home Page. Frances A. Althaus. Web. 15 June 2010. .
In this essay I will research and provide a timeline of developments to human rights, i will explain the underlying principles of the human rights approach and the importance of adopting human rights to care. After the Second World War ended in the mid 1940’s there became a serious realisation to the importance of human rights. This realisation got the United Nations to establish the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This Declaration shows the first ever international agreement on the primary principles of human rights. There is a total of thirty basic human rights within the Universal Declaration and these rights apply to every single person in the world. An example of one of the rights everyone has is ‘the
...nts of Health and the Prevention of Health Inequities. Retrieved 2014, from Australian Medical Association: https://ama.com.au/position-statement/social-determinants-health-and-prevention-health-inequities-2007
Many feminists in the Western Culture have this ethnocentric idea that female circumcision is “female mutilation” portraying it as a “barbaric tradition” and “violence against women” (“Yes to Female Circumcision?”). According to Fuambai Ahmadu, a Sierra Leonean-American anthropologist, female circumcision is an initiation that symbolizes matriarchal power. The practice is “synonymous with women’s power, their political, economic, reproductive, and ritual spheres of influence” (Ahmadu, pg. 14). By having no regards to the cultures and traditions of these small-scale societies, we are invalidating their beliefs and presenting ethnocentric
National health systems are assessed by the extent to which expenditure and actions in public health and medical care contributes to the crucial social goals of improving health, increasing access to quality healthcare, reducing health disparities, protecting citizens from penury due to medical e...
Nowicka, Wanda. "Sexual and Reproductive Rights and the Human Rights Agenda: Controversial and Contested." Reproductive Health Matters, 19.38 (2011): 119.
In some way, public health is seen as a modern philosophical and ideological perspective based on ‘equity’ and aimed to determine inequitable in society. It seen as a ‘science’ and ‘art’ in the sense that it deals with the cause of disease, treatment of illness as well as it involves laboratory experiments, intervention and promoting of health of the population. Winslow (1920, p. 23) defined public health as ‘the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting physical health and efficiency through organised community efforts for the sanitation of the environment, the control community infections, the education of the individual in principles of personal hygiene, the organisation of medical and nursing service for early diagnosis and preventive treatment of disease, and the development of social machinery which will ensure to every individual in the community a standard of living adequate for the maintenance of health. On the other hand, it is ‘the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through organised effort of society’ (Acheson, 1998; in Cowley S, 2002, p. 261).
...on, race, and political belief, economic or social condition. Improving the poor health of disadvantaged individuals and reducing health gaps is important but not enough to level up health through socioeconomic groups. The objective of tackling health inequalities can be changed to local needs and priorities of a community allowing wide-ranging partnerships of support to be organised. However it needs to be made clear that what can be done to help improve the life chances and health prospects of individuals living in poverty may not come close to bringing their health prospects closer to the average of the rest of the population or prevent the gap living on throughout the generations. Being clear about what is trying to be overcome and achieved needs upmost importance in the development and delivery of policies that will promote health equality across the population.
As we have clearly seen, medicine for profit is not solving the problems of the healthcare system and many people are going bankrupt, dying, and choosing suicide over costly bills. Maybe we should learn from all of these situations and numbers and see that, like the UK did, we should be looking at ways to expand our basic human rights to include healthcare. The question at hand was is healthcare a right or a privilege, reviewing all facts, and data given you will see that Health Care in the United States is a privilege. It seems very vile to have resources, and services to deny a person who has a curable illness or disease, because they don’t have proper health care. However, this is the society we live in where liberty and justice for all comes before healthcare for all.
The right to health contains entitlements. These entitlements are access to essential medicines, the right to prevention, treatment, and control of disease, maternal, health related education, and participation. Prevention plays an important role in maintain public health, particularly children’s health. Vaccinating children, as well as awareness campaigns, can lead to a significant reduction in health risks. Additionally, spreading basic information about hygiene, nutritional needs, etc., as well as the circulation of simple illustrations reminding people of the fundamental rules are very efficient actions for informing populations and improving healthy behavior. (“Understanding Children’s Right to Health”, n.d.). Therefore, if people have right to health it will result into prevention and more awareness about