PHA-Exchange> Food for a quarantined thought

[Claudio]

Human Rights Reader 155

 

PUBLIC HEALTH BRINGS A COUNTERBALANCE TO THE INDIVIDUAL-CENTERED VIEW OF HUMAN RIGHTS. 

 

[The issue has come up in South Africa whether to quarantine drug-resistant TB patients. This again brings up the issue of individual versus collective rights].

  

1. In the above case, it has been said that individual human rights (HR) may be in conflict with social benefits.  But the fact is that one can respect individual HR and advance public health. Moreover, advancing public health  is justified in terms of collective HR.

 

2. The qualifier, though, for the two statements above is the following: 

One can limit individual rights in the interest of public health if and when: 

·        the policy is legitimate and follows due legal process, 

·        the policy is effective in realizing an important public health goal, 

·        the policy is strictly necessary and is democratically applied, 

·        there are no less-intrusive means available to achieve the same objective (i.e., intrusive on the individual rights of a person), and 

·        the policy's application is not arbitrary, discriminatory or unreasonable.

 

3. Such a stance can be justified even in international HR law, specifically in the case of risk of the spread of an infectious disease. But the conditions of when and how such a public health action should be taken have to be compatible with respecting collective rights.

 

4. In this example of the 'terrible (drug-resistant) TB', the issue of a quarantine is more one of a trade-off between individual and collective rights than it is one about individual rights and public health. Here, public health needs can overrule the narrow individualistic view of rights.

 

5. Conversely, issues of access to health care are both relevant to fulfilling individual and collective rights (.as well as to fulfilling social justice and equity goals). In this context, HR are not different from social justice* and equity. This, since the more unequal a society, the more it violates HR. 

 

6. It is even more: Human Rights have been described as today's principal vehicle for addressing inequities and social justice in national and international contexts and as 

the most globally accepted political value of our times. (R. Labonte)     

*:  Note that social justice is different from social benefits.

 

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn 

__________________________

Adapted from L. London in Equinet Newsletter 68 October 2006: 'Human rights and public health: more than just about civil liberties', and from comments received on it by Dr B. Starsfield.
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