INTERIGHTS Bulletin: Human Rights Abuses and Health Care

December 1, 2011

The association between medical care and adherence to a values-based ethical form of behavior has a long history, stretching back more than 2,500 years to the Hippocratic Oath. At the same time fundamental guarantees, such as the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, are universal and absolute. In these circumstances one might expect that it should be relatively straightforward to integrate a human rights approach into healthcare settings to both safeguard the interests of patients and ensure effective accountability for abuses.

However, as highlighted in a special edition of the INTERIGHTS Bulletin, the reality is very different. Across the globe millions of patients frequently experience severe pain and suffering, abuse, neglect and prejudice. Often this occurs out of sight of public consciousness with no possibility for victims to hold anybody to account and secure any form of redress. Although the focus is on torture and ill-treatment, many other relevant rights – health, dignity, due process, information and participation – are discussed, reflecting both the indivisibility and interdependence of rights and the need for a holistic approach in delivering patients’ rights centered healthcare systems.

In a similar vein, viewing abuses in health settings through the lens of torture, cruel, inhuman and/or degrading treatment is not aimed at stigmatizing healthcare providers as ‘‘torturers.’’ Rather, it is to protect patients and ensure that sufficient safeguards and accountability mechanisms are in place. The  legal implications of a finding of torture or ill-treatment could be highly significant in ensuring non-repetition.

The Bulletin provides a comprehensive overview of torture in health care focusing firmly on accountability, particularly in respect of hidden abuses suffered by some of the most vulnerable and marginalized who are often powerless to take remedial action. There are specific articles on abuses suffered in health care by people who use drugs, sex workers, women seeking reproductive health services, people with tuberculosis, and people suffering in untreated pain, among others.

Despite the clear recognition by the UN Human Rights Committee that patients in medical institutions should equally be protected from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment as those in prison or police custody, in practice there has been very little attention given to the issue by human rights bodies.

The full Bulletin is available for download here.

Tagged : sex workers   United Nations   pain relief   compulsory detention   drug treatment   tuberculosis   reproductive rights