I Book Review: Health Justice
| Author | Brigit Toebes |
| Published date | 01 June 2012 |
| Date | 01 June 2012 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/016934411203000208 |
| Subject Matter | Part C: DocumentationI Book Review |
Netherlands Q uarterly of Human R ights, Vol. 30/2, 245–254, 2012.
© Netherlands I nstitute of Human Rig hts (SIM), Printed in the Net herlands. 245
PART C: DOCUMENTATION
I BOOK REVIEWS
Sridhar Venkatapuram, Hea lth Justice, Polity Press, Ca mbridge / Malden, 2011,
ISBN 978–0–7456–5034 –0 (hardback) and ISBN 978–0–7456–5035–7 (paperback)
e book ‘Health Justice’ by Sridhar Venkatapuram only contai ns a short section
on human rights. Yet, implicitly the whole book is ver y much about human rights,
and about the foundations and de nition of ‘health rights’ in part icular. As such,
this book can help us to obtain a more profound understandi ng of the conceptual
premises underlying hea lth rights.
e starting point for this rich a nd inspiring book is the notion that for human
beings to live a long and healthy life not only access to medica l care is required, but
also having ‘other things ranging from emotional nurturi ng as well as cognitive and
physical sti mulation when they are in fants to adequ ate nutrition, shelter, clothing,
access to information, protection from physica l, psychological and sexual abuse, and
so forth throug hout their life’ (p. 1). is approac h is not completely new to the huma n
rights discourse, as the de nit ion of the right to health in the va rious UN and regional
human rights treaties takes this broad approach to health as a starting point. ese
provisions contain a broad right to healt h-related services and conditions, rather t han
a mere right to healthca re. is approach is based on the de nition of health in the
forward-looking Const itution of the World Health Organization (1946), which de nes
health as ‘complete physical, mental a nd social well-bei ng’. Also, the more recently
adopted so law inst ruments re ect this v iew. For example, General Comment 14 on
the right to health i n Article 12 of the International Covenant of Economic, S ocial and
Cultural R ights states that a right to healt h embraces a right to healthcare as wel l as a
right to a number of underlying cond itions for health (2000, paragraph 4).
However, Venkatapuram and others look at this matter with much more
sophistication, grounding their views on more recent insights generated by public
health research. Such research, carried out over the past 40 years or so, indicates
that there are increasi ng health inequa lities between t he lower and higher social
classes (pp. 84–89). For example, the so-ca lled ‘Whitehall-study’ (Mar mot et al, 1978)
demonstrated that civi l servants working at the bottom of an organ ization had much
higher rates of mortal ity and disease than t hose that were positioned higher up in the
organization. e researchers found that there is a so -called ‘social gradient in he alth’
across all the employment grades, meaning t hat the relation between socioeconomic
level and health is g raded. is is con rmed by a more recent and broader study by the
Commission on the Social Determinants of Health of the World Health Organization.
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