Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, USA.
Health Hum Rights. 2008;10(1):5-19.
Two decades of work delivering health care in poor communities provide a standpoint from which to challenge conventional doctrines in human rights and public health. These orthodoxies include the priority often assigned to civil and political rights over economic and social rights and a narrow concept of cost-effectiveness in public health policy. An analysis based on economic and social rights underscores, for example, that effectively treating infectious diseases in poor communities requires ensuring that people receive adequate food The challenge of maternal mortality in low-income settings similarly shows the need for an approach to rights that is simultaneously comprehensive and pragmatic. In many settings, paying community health workers for their efforts on behalf of their neighbors can also be seen as a critical strategy to realize right. Across contexts, the yield on the expanded and pragmatic view of health and human rights adumbrated here may be considerable. In forthcoming issues, Health and Human Rights will continue to investigate the conceptual, but above all the practical aspects of such issues, seeking to shift the health and rights agenda in a way that may make sense to the world's poor and marginalized, the chief victims of contemporary human rights violations.
二十年来在贫困社区提供医疗服务的工作为我们提供了一个立足点，可以从这个立足点挑战人权和公共卫生领域的传统教义。这些正统观念包括经常优先考虑公民权利和政治权利而不是经济和社会权利，以及公共卫生政策中狭隘的成本效益概念。基于经济和社会权利的分析例如强调，要在贫困社区有效治疗传染病，就必须确保人们获得足够的食物。在低收入环境中应对产妇死亡率的挑战同样表明，需要采取一种全面而务实的权利方法。在许多情况下，向社区卫生工作者支付报酬，以表彰他们为邻居所做的努力，也可以被视为实现权利的关键策略。在不同的情况下，这里阐述的对健康和人权的扩展和务实观点可能会产生相当大的效果。在即将出版的问题中，《健康与人权》将继续探讨这些问题的概念方面，但首先是其实践方面，旨在以一种可能对世界上的穷人和边缘化人群有意义的方式推动健康和权利议程，这些人是当代侵犯人权行为的主要受害者。
