Update and summary guide to the WHO report: Advancing the right to health: the vital role of law

In September 2018 the World Health Organisation published an Update and Summary Guide to the report Advancing the Right to Health: the Vital Role of Law.

[See here for a previous post on the full report].

The summary Guide, like the full report, was a collaboration between the World Health Organisation, International Development Law Organisation, Sydney Law School, and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, Washington DC.

The aim of the original report, published in January 2017, was to raise awareness about the role that the reform of public health law can play in advancing the right to health and creating the conditions in which people can live healthy lives.

The Update and Summary Guide keeps the same focus: providing an introduction to the role of law in health development, with links to the full report, while also drawing attention to topics that were beyond the scope of the original report, and to links between law and the health-related Sustainable Development Goals.

The Update and Summary Guide integrates new health data and refers to new developments, including a list of highly cost–effective legal measures for reducing risk factors for non-communicable diseases (“NCDs”), drawn from the updated Appendix 3 of the WHO Global Action Plan for Prevention and Control of NCDs. It also references selected new decisions, such as the unsuccessful claim by a tobacco company against Uruguay’s tobacco control laws, and the decision of the Constitutional Court of Colombia confirming the right to receive information about the health effects of sugary drinks.