Protecting The Right To Health In Public Health Emergencies

The COVID-19 pandemic began in late 2019 and has affected the lives of billions of people worldwide,is a public health emergency in the doctrine of infectious disease outbreaks.Because of their sudden,complex and dangerous nature,public health emergencies can pose a profound threat to human rights safeguards.Undoubtedly,the human right most closely associated with public health emergencies is the right to health.From a human rights perspective,the first legal interest to be violated in a public health emergency is the legal interest in health.Therefore,the question of how to protect the right to health in public health emergencies is a very important one.The right to health was created in the aftermath of the Second World War and is a second-generation human right.The International Covenant on Economic,Social and Cultural Rights defines the right to health as the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.In terms of status,it is a fundamental right.In terms of the attributes of the right to health,General Comment No.14 of the ICESCR states that the right to health includes both ’freedoms’ and ’rights’,which suggests that the right to health is a composite right with both positive and negative rights dimensions.The right to health is a composite right with both positive and negative aspects.As such,the State,as the primary duty bearer for the realization of the right to health,should not only have a negative duty of omission,but also a corresponding positive duty of action.The challenges to guaranteeing the right to health in the face of public health emergencies also arise from both the positive and negative rights dimensions.The challenge on the negative side is the opposition between the right to health and other fundamental rights,while the challenge on the positive side is the inadequate provision of health care systems in emergency situations.The former cannot be resolved without a proper understanding of the dialectical relationship between the right to health and other fundamental rights in public health emergencies,and on this basis,a hierarchy of rights is established,making it clear that the right to health is the most important right in the hierarchy of rights.The solution to the latter lies in improving the health care system and enhancing the capacity to respond to public health emergencies,including the establishment of an emergency mechanism for medical security,the coordination of the medical security system and the medical service system,the coordination of public health funding and medical insurance,and the formulation of a plan for the allocation of scarce public medical resources.