PRESS CONFERENCE BY special rapporteur on right to health

 

Maternal mortality was “one of the most serious human rights issues that we face today”, said Paul Hunt, Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, during a press conference at Headquarters this afternoon.

Every year, over 500,000 women died of maternal mortality, whether in childbirth or in complications relating from pregnancy, with 95 per cent of those deaths occurring in Africa and Asia.  The data also showed that “de-facto discrimination” took place in the developed world towards indigenous women and women in minority groups.  One of the most “shocking” aspects of the issue was that most cases of maternal mortality were preventable, by means of a few “well-known and not always very expensive” interventions.

He called for the United Nations Human Rights Council to hold a special session on maternal mortality.  He also praised the launch last week, at a conference called “Women Deliver” in London, of a new international initiative on maternal mortality and human rights.

Turning to the issue of access to medicine, he said another major obstacle to the right to health was the price-fixing of medicine, a practice carried out by some, though not all, pharmaceutical companies.  Almost 2 billion people lacked access to essential medicines, and improving access to medicine could save 10 million lives every year.

He had drafted a set of human rights guidelines for pharmaceutical companies in relation to access to medicines, which he had introduced to the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) today (See Press Release GA/SHC/3894).  The guidelines were intended both to show companies what was required of them and to provide a clear set of standards so that third parties could measure the conduct of those companies.  He hoped to finalize those guidelines, introduced in draft form today, in 2008.

Responding to a question, he said that, over the last several years, he had visited Sweden, Uganda, Ecuador and Colombia, among other countries.  In Uganda, he had focused on the issue of “neglected diseases”.  That mission, he said, had informed the draft guidelines on access to pharmaceuticals.  He had also consulted with pharmaceutical companies in crafting the guidelines.

Asked about his work on a United Nations panel looking into Guantanamo, he said that five United Nations independent human rights experts had sought to visit Guantanamo Bay in order to issue a report on detainee conditions.  The Government of the United States had invited three of the five experts to visit Guantanamo, provided that they did not speak with any of the detainees.  Given that condition, which he called “unacceptable”, the five experts had decided not to visit.  Instead, they had prepared a joint report, tabled to the Human Rights Council last year, recommending that Guantanamo be closed as early as possible, and expressing concern about the condition of detainees, highlighting the impact of conditions in the facility on the mental health of detainees and the possible implication of health-care professionals in the interrogation of detainees.

* *** *

For information media • not an official record