The human right to health means that everyone has the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, which includes access to all medical services, sanitation, adequate food, decent housing, healthy working conditions, and a clean environment.

What this means is;

The human right to health guarantees a system of health protection for all.

Everyone has the right to the health care they need, and to living conditions that enable them to be healthy, such as adequate food, housing, and a healthy environment. 

Health care must be provided as a public good for all, financed publicly and equitably. The human right to health care means that hospitals, clinics, medicines, and doctors’ services must be accessible, available, acceptable, and of good quality for everyone, on an equitable basis, where and when needed irrespective of location, level of education and socioeconomic status.

The design of a health care system must be guided by the following key human rights standards and components:

• The Right to Appropriate Health Care

The right to healthcare requires the establishment of health facilities, goods and services such as hospitals, doctors and drugs that are of good quality and available to all on an equal basis. These services must be affordable to everyone, the dignity of the people and their diverse needs must be respected and operations must be transparent. And these facilities must provide preventive, curative, palliative and rehabilitative health services, including regular screening programs, appropriate treatment of prevalent diseases and illnesses, injuries, both physical and mental and all necessary medications. Health care institutions and providers in other words must respect dignity, provide culturally appropriate care, be responsive to needs based on gender, age, culture, language, and different ways of life and abilities. They must respect medical ethics and protect confidentiality.

•  The Right to an Adequate Supply of Water, Food, Nutrition and Housing

The right to health requires equal access for all underlying determinants of health, such as an adequate supply of food and proper nutrition, safe and potable water, basic sanitation and adequate housing and living conditions. These amenities are not privileges but basic human rights.

•  The Right to a Healthy Environment and Healthy Working Conditions

The right to a healthy environment requires ‘’the prevention and reduction of the population’s exposure to harmful substances… or other detrimental environmental conditions that directly or indirectly impact upon human health’’, including the pollution of air, water and soil. The right to safe and healthy working conditions requires the establishment of ‘‘preventive measures in respect of occupational accidents and diseases’’, as well as the minimization of the ‘’causes of health hazards inherent in the working environment’’.