Health

People exercise the right to health

The right to health is a fundamental human right and is one of the essential conditions for exercising other human rights. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) defines the right to health as everyone’s right to enjoy the highest attainable physical and mental health. This includes the right to health and physical control, the right to privacy, and the right to health care systems that provide equal opportunity to enjoy the highest level of health obtainable.

However, in reality, the right to health is currently not available for everyone to enjoy. Many people including pregnant women and children are unable to access crucial health services, which leads to high maternal mortality, child death and various infectious diseases. Every day, 830 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth, and 99% of all maternal deaths occur in developing countries. Furthermore, less than half of all births in lower and middle income countries were assisted by skilled health personnel.

Our health work focuses on the following three areas:

Ensuring universal access to basic health services

Everyone should enjoy the right to health. With policy advocacy and capacity development of health service providers, we work to enable quality health services to provide basic needs for everyone. Furthermore, it is also important to tackle financial barriers. Thus we will support the establishment of community based health assistance.

Enabling quality maternal and child health & sexual and reproductive health service access

Quality health services should be provided to mothers and children. Hence we put effort into promoting community awareness and capacity development of service providers for maternal and infant needs. In addition, we promote the practice of healthy reproductive and sexual practices through awareness development.

Supporting people’s access to safe water and sanitation

Water is essential for health and ultimately life. We will work together with communities in order to ensure sufficient and safe water for everyone. Hygiene and sanitation is also crucial to good health. We will promote people’s awareness of good hygiene and sanitary practices.