Evaluating essential health packages from a human rights perspective

ABSTRACT

Many countries at all levels of development have formulated an essential health package, sometimes also referred to as a health benefit plan or a health benefit basket. As defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), essential health packages (EHPs) are “health service interventions that are considered important and that society decides should be provided to everyone.” Although EHPs are not often formulated from an explicitly human rights perspective, since they are conceptualized as a guaranteed minimum of health services, much like core health obligations, they have obvious human rights import. This article evaluates the principles from which the plans are developed, the content of the packages, and the experience of countries seeking to implement them from a human rights perspective. In the process, it seeks to gain greater clarity about the health service requirements of the right to health.

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Notes on contributors

Audrey R. Chapman

Audrey R. Chapman, PhD, is Healey Professor of Medical Ethics and Humanities in the Department of Community Medicine at the UConn School of Medicine and an Adjunct Professor of Law at the UConn School of Law. Her latest book, Global Health, Human Rights, and the Challenges of Neoliberal Policies, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. Lisa Forman, SJD, is the Lupina Assistant Professor in Global Health and Human Rights at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Director of the Comparative Program on Health and Society at the Munk School of Global Affairs of the University of Toronto. She is the Co-Editor of Access to Medicines as a Human Right: Implications for Pharmaceutical Industry Responsibility. Everaldo Lamprea, SJD, is an Assistant Professor at the Los Andes Law School of Los Andes University in Bogotá, Colombia.