The human right to health and the challenge of poverty

Abstract

The human right to health has assumed considerable prominence as one of the most pressing international issues of the twenty-first century. This chapter examines arguments regarding how the mutually reinforcing cycle of poverty, inequality, and poor health affects the disease burden around the world, and considers why the right to health is widely compromised by global health disparities. It first traces the evolution of international concern with health as a basic human right. The following section discusses two competing frameworks—statist and globalist—for conceptualizing the meaning and value of health within current international policy. The final section analyses the right to health in terms of recognition theory’s emphasis on the intersectional injustices of poverty and inequality, which have deleterious effects on health as well as on identity and self-respect.