Researchers are learning to grow personalized organs in labs. They’re tapping into the skulls of spinal cord injury patients and giving them back control of their bodies with direct brain stimulation. They developed an entire COVID vaccine (multiple, in fact) in a year.
So why are there still kids in less-developed nations who don’t have access to routine childhood vaccinations that cost a few dollars each? And why are there people in highly-developed nations who are choosing to Uber to the hospital if they break a leg because they can’t afford an ambulance? (Yes USA, I’m talking about you.)
At this level, it seems to come down to an unequal distribution of wealth and resources, combined with a not-insignificant level of political corruption. We have NGOs in place to help redistribute aid where needed, but most of them have developed from a need for extra hands, because states were ill-equipped to provide their citizens with adequate care. This is not always the fault of the state; natural disasters, war, and exploitation by more powerful entities may play a part in the suffering incurred by the people, but a lack of clarity in international treaties, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, means that confusion or state avoidance of responsibility can further complicate matters (2).
Dr James Wilson’s lecture explored the relationship between rights and obligations, and while the relationship is relatively clear in a theoretical context, execution is obviously a little more tricky. How do we make sure every plays their part in a system with so many individual players? Healthcare by nature is not a one-size-fits-all solution, and trying to paint it as such leads to situations like Soobramoney in South Africa and certain Brazilian legal cases (1). While the systems for allocating healthcare stand on polar opposites of the spectrum of treatment for a critically ill individual versus the greatest good for an entire population, we can plainly see the issue of finding a balance.
The balance should be easier to correct in wealthier nations: in the US, sky-high healthcare prices arise not from a lack of resources, but from unfettered corporate greed. The US requires not a change in the approach to human rights in the sense mentioned in the lectures , but a change in the overall political system to make better use of the billions of dollars of medications, supplies, hospital beds, and cutting-edge treatments that people fly from all over the world to receive.
Poorer nations are at the disadvantage set out by all of the treaties and declarations; as long as there is insufficient access to medical care, some individuals will find themselves left to die. The ideal, and certainly idealistic, solution, would be a layered approach, where communities take care of their own. What they can’t handle is dealt with by the state, and what the state can’t afford is aided by the international community. This comes back to a fundamental question of how to allocate obligations, and putting it into practice has proved to be almost impossible. With a growing global population and a rapidly advancing technological sphere, what seems to be holding the process of equitable access to rights is politics and power struggles, which show few signs of ever going away.
References
- Soobramoney v Minister of Health. [1997] ZACC 17. 1997.
- United Nations. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Paris: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; 1748.