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The right to the maximum achievable standard of health as a vital right of every human being is envisioned in the World Health Organization constitution, a requirement for all UN member nations. This essay seeks to assess the level of attainment of this goal in the United States and globally. The paper outlines the required standard and quality of health standards that should be availed to everyone and provides a commentary on whether this is doable while offering recommendations on what the primary focus should be.
Right to Health and the State
The provision of healthcare to citizens of a particular nation is the legal obligation of the state. The state must provide all the requirements that enable its people to achieve timely and appropriate healthcare. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2017) requires that a state provides the maximum available resources towards its health service to progressively attain this goal. Healthcare must also prioritize the wants of people most disadvantaged to ensure that they achieve equity. This freedom cannot be affected by such variations as race, age, background, or any other status. This right must be guaranteed to all despite their differences.
Efforts that ensure such differences do not hamper the provision of health to citizens by the state should be geared towards addressing those differences individually (WHO, 2017). The government must address fundamental concerns of discrimination in race and age to ensure that the citizens are not affected by these issues.
The provision of health to citizens by a state must ensure accountability, equality and non-discrimination, and participation. The government must bear the responsibility of errors within its provision of healthcare services and ensure that it involves the citizens in their healthcare (WHO, 2017). Participation in setting targets and deciding on resource allocation is a duty of the state in ensuring that citizens have a stake in their healthcare. All these standards are a requirement for every member state of the UN. A government must ensure the obtainability, convenience, appropriateness, and quality of the healthcare services it provides to its citizens.
Challenges to the Right to Health
The attainment of the right to healthcare has had many challenges over the years. These challenges include access to healthcare services due to poor economic development in some countries (Bloom et al., 2018). It includes some developing nations that do not have adequate infrastructural developments to enable the citizens to access health. Inadequate funds for the construction of healthcare centers and purchasing drugs are also challenges for these nations.
Poor transport services to the existing healthcare centers are also an issue for these countries. Congestion in healthcare centers is also a challenge for developing nations as the centers are inadequate to cater to their large populations (Bloom et al., 2018). In such developed countries as the United States, one of the major challenges to the achievement of this right is high healthcare costs. The massive technological and scientific development means that healthcare is highly advanced. Citizens incur high costs in ensuring that they can access quality healthcare in the form of health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses.
Attainment of the Right to Health
Such issues as racism, ethnicity, and age also affect healthcare in developed nations. In the United States, race plays a major role as African Americans cannot access the same level of healthcare as White citizens (Dickman et al., 2017). This is due to inadequate healthcare facilities in African American neighborhoods and their general inability to afford healthcare in those areas. These issues demonstrate that the realization of this right is a concern that each nation should tackle independently. Developing states, in this regard, must tackle essential issues that grossly affect healthcare from all angles as they are the most affected.
These nations have the responsibility of ensuring that infrastructural development occurs to adequately cater to healthcare development. Developed states also have unique responsibilities in the provision of healthcare to their citizens. These responsibilities include ensuring that race, age, and ethnicity do not interfere with healthcare to their citizens. The primary focus of healthcare providers must be on all possible aspects of prevention, treatment, and follow-up services to ensure that healthcare is holistic.
Conclusion
In conclusion, healthcare is core to world development and the provision of the highest standard of living in all nations. There is a need for each nation to focus on ensuring that their citizens are accorded the best possible healthcare within the confines of the WHO requirements. From the illustrations above, this right has not been adequately attained for all people. The attainment of this right varies with different nations having varying problems in their efforts.
Although the right to healthcare is universal, the steps needed to ensure that this right is attained are not collective. Each nation must consider its situation and come up with measures that address the individual problems it faces. The guiding principles of this right are, however, similar. It includes ensuring that healthcare is accessible, available, acceptable, and of the best quality. Public participation is also a requirement in the setting of healthcare standards and priorities. People must have a stake in deciding their most urgent needs. Equity is also crucial to ensure that all people are served.
References
Bloom, D. E., Khoury, A., & Subbaraman, R. (2018). The promise and peril of universal health care. Science, 361(6404), eaat9644.
Dickman, S. L., Himmelstein, D. U., & Woolhandler, S. (2017). Inequality and the health-care system in the USA. The Lancet, 389(10077), 1431–1441.
World Health Organization. (2017). Human rights and health. WHO.
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