Robinson: Health is a human right
Former President Mary Robinson today highlighted the importance of health as a human right.
At a conference on tackling the HIV and AIDS pandemic which was beamed to international policy makers across the world, she said the right to health services had to be taken from a theory to a reality.
More than 800 health specialists also attended the event in Dublin to discuss policies relating to the prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS around the world.
Mrs Robinson, now president of Realising Rights: the Ethical Globalisation Initiative based in New York, told delegates the importance of good research evidence was to separate the treatments and strategies that work, from those that do not.
As calls were made for action to put ideas into practice, Minister of State at Irish Aid, Conor Lenihan, announced €70m funding to target HIV and AIDS in Africa.
Speaking via video conference to Uganda, South Africa, Papua New Guinea and Tunisia, Mrs Robinson added that despite having legal strategies in relation to health as a human right, it was only one dimension of putting those rights in place and making it happen.
Mr Lenihan said the partnership deal with the Clinton Foundation will support the provision of new and enhanced testing, treatment and awareness services over the next five years.
Around €60m of Irish Aid funding will go directly to the provision of services in Mozambique, where more than 16% of adults are infected with HIV.
The remaining €10m will support services in Lesotho, which has one of the worst rates of HIV in the world.
“Our relationship with the Clinton Foundation means that Irish Aid funds go considerably further in tackling the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa,” said Mr Lenihan.
“Over the past three years the Foundation has dramatically reduced the price of anti-retroviral treatment for people in countries where HIV/AIDS is at crisis levels.”
HIV and AIDS are currently the greatest healthcare challenges facing some parts of the world, if not the world as a whole.
Latest figures show the number of HIV infections reported in Ireland up to the end of 2005 was 4,082, with 318 newly diagnosed sufferers during 2005, compared to 356 diagnosed in 2004.
Up to the end of September 2005, there were 862 cases of AIDS resulting in 398 deaths.
The cases included 308 injecting drug users, 278 gay men, 181 heterosexual people, 33 haemophiliacs, 29 children, 10 injecting drug users who were also gay men, 3 transfusion recipients and 20 were other or unknown.
The conference, held by Cochrane Colloquium in the Burlington Hotel, is the annual conference of the Cochrane Collaboration – an international non-profit organisation, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of healthcare readily available worldwide.
The event was supported by the Health Research Board, the leading agency for funding and suporting health research in Ireland which focuses on improving people’s health through research and information.
