Photo credit: United Workers Photo stream
One of the events the Institute will organize during the Swedish Forum for Human Rights next week is a panel discussion focusing on the Right to Health. We met with Visiting Professor Maria Green, who is the host of the discussion, to talk about how health and human rights fit together.
Could you describe the event?
This will be a sort of double mini-seminar — an hour in total — focusing on the right to health from an on-the-ground, practical perspective. International human rights law tells us that every human being is entitled to the “highest attainable standard of health.” What does this mean in practice, and how does it relate to the day-to-day decisions of policy-makers and of health professionals? What is the relationship between human rights, health, and the protection of the most vulnerable? We’ll explore the implications of those for a practicing health system and for everyone involved, whether as health practitioners, policy-makers, or ordinary people who experience health issues and receive health services.
Who are the panelists?
The panelists who will join me are Titti Mattsson, Professor of Public law at Lund University and Hélène Pessah Rasmussen, Associate Professor and Head of Rehabilitation Medicine at Skåne University Hospital.
Titti is also the co-director of a research program on Law and Vulnerabilities at the Law Faculty at Lund and collaborates with the Medical Faculty, among other faculties, in her work on topics such as law and incapacitation, law and active aging, and law and ehealth. Héléne also serves as the Chairwoman of Region Skåne’s expert group for stroke and as the medical director for SVEUS-Stroke (Nationell samverkan för värdebaserad ersättning och uppföljning i hälso- och sjukvården) and in addition to all of this is a practicing doctor herself.
It is exciting to have speakers who can make this a rich and well-grounded conversation that lets us explore in a practical way what the international right to health means at the country level. I will also be participating as someone who works in international human rights, including the right to health.
Why is this important to discuss, and why now?
Health is always a current issue in peoples’ lives and we all experience the medical system in one way or another. MR-dagarna are a wonderful opportunity to talk about health and human rights together. Human rights law is a potentially powerful lens for looking at issues of basic human needs — food, health, housing, education, clean water, and so forth — because it insists on seeing all human beings as important, and sets out frameworks for considering what a society owes to its members.
Another important element is that human rights law pays attention to process, to how we do things: to who gets to make decisions, to whether all people being treated equally or fairly, to whether there is a good way to fix problems, etc. This seminar is a great chance to have a cross-section discussion with people working in different fields and coming at these questions from different perspectives.
“Health and Human Rights” will be held Tuesday, November 10th at 12.00. Maria Green will also take part in a panel on economic, social and cultural rights hosted by The Swedish Foundation for Human Rights (Fonden för mänskliga rättigheter).