UNAIDS launches “My Health, My Right” campaign
30 November 2017 - In the lead-up to World AIDS Day on 1 December, UNAIDS has launched the campaign, My Health, My Right . It focuses on the right to health and explores the challenges people around the world face in exercising their rights. “All people, regardless of who they love, have the right to health” said Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS.
Share your view
My Health, My Right encourages people to share their views and concerns around ensuring their own right to health. It creates a movement to highlight the importance of erasing health inequalities. The campaign materials are tweets, downloadable posters and postcards and an information brochure that includes key messages about the right to health.
The right to health includes non-discrimination
The right to health was adopted in 1966 in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. This includes the right of everyone to the prevention and treatment of ill health, to make decisions about one’s own health and to be treated with respect and dignity.
The campaign reminds people that the right to health is much more than access to quality health services. it also depends on assurances including healthy working conditions and access to justice.The most marginalized people in society, like sex workers, people who inject drugs, men who have sex with men, people in prisons and migrants, are often the least able to access their right to health; they are also the most vulnerable to HIV.
Sustainable Development Goals
Most of the Sustainable Development Goals are linked in some way to health. To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, including ending the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030, will depend heavily on ensuring the right to health for all. UNDP and UNESCO are developing indicators for LGBTI development and education, and there too, indicators focusing on SOGI related school bullying are related to health.
Source: UNAIDS