Groningen Centre for Health Law

On September 4th, our pilot results from the Essential Laws for Medicines Accessproject were presented at the workshop ‘International Law and Domestic Law Making Process’ at the University of Basel.

On 15 June 2015, the member states of the Organization of American States (OAS) approved the Inter-American Convention on Protecting the Human Rights of Older Persons during the General Assembly of the institution.

Equitable access to medicines to treat non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as cancer and diabetes, is a major public health challenge in need of a global response. In August 2015, GHLG submitted comments to the WHO’s consultation on its discussion paper Essential medicines and basic health technologies for non-communicable diseases: towards a set of actions to improve equitable access in Member States. 

How can the international human rights framework contribute to the global response to NCDs? Are the current international human rights frameworks adequate to address NCDs, or do we need new sources of legal obligation?

The goal of UHC (Universal Health Coverage) is to ‘ensure that all people obtain the health services they need without suffering financial hardship when paying for them’. There are many dense connections between the goal of UHC, and the State’s legal obligation to realize the human right to the highest attainable standard of health (‘right to health’). In light of this goal, it is important to assess private sector involvement in the health sector. For example, private actors may not always have the incentives to deal with externalities that affect availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality of health care related services; they may not be in the position to provide ‘public goods’; or they may be subjected to imperfect information. The main question that this paper sets out to answer is: what are the legal human rights obligations imposed on States to regulate private sector involvement in healthcare?

In the context of celebrating 10 years of the Osaka university office in Groningen Osaka and Groningen propose to discuss the issue of global health in humanitarianism (an issue in both Universities’ field of interest) in an interdisciplinary setting during a one-day seminar, bringing together experts from a variety of fields engaged in research and policy on global health in contemporary humanitarianism.

The Millennium Development Goals expire at the end of 2015 and global negotiations are underway to finalise the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Much activism has occurred encouraging a post-2015 health and development goal embedded in the highest attainable standard of health (‘right to health’). Despite this, the right to health was absent in three key post-2015 intergovernmental Sustainable Development Goal proposals in 2014, one of which was reinforced by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2014 as the guiding document for ongoing interstate negotiations. This article examines why it appears the right to health, so far, is not gaining direct expression in post-2015 discussion.

Due to the consistently high inflow of asylum seekers, tensions are rising in several European countries. Germany is especially challenged to provide basic reception rights in accordance with international human rights standards.

In 2012, Spain adopted significant legislative changes with regard to the universal right to health care. Due to these changes, the universal right to health care is currently at risk. In order to allow for a better understanding of the relevance of these measures, I will briefly outline the evolution of the Spanish National Healthcare System (NHS) as well as the recent changes.

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