HPH NOWDean Frenk Tells Students at Conference that Health Is a Social Right
Treating health as a social right has global implications, HSPH Dean Julio Frenk told an audience of students from 75 public health, medical, nursing, and undergraduate schools at Brown University on February 1. Dean Frenk delivered the closing keynote address, “Ideas and Ideals: Human Rights as a Basis for Health Reform in Mexico,” at the two-day Physicians for Human Rights National Student Conference.
Dean Frenk
As Mexico’s minister of health from 2000 to 2006, Dean Frenk oversaw the country’s ambitious plan to expand health care to its 50 million uninsured citizens. He told the audience that public health policy must be guided by both ideas and ideals. Science-derived ideas form a base for sound decision making, while ideals create a base of integrity from which to take action.
The Mexican reform effort drew on data indicating that the country’s health system was not keeping up with its epidemiological challenges such as malnutrition, chronic disease, and injury. For the large percentage of the population that was uninsured, the system was worsening poverty rather than alleviating it, Dean Frenk said. This evidence gave policymakers the means to challenge the status quo and promote change. Through consensus among an array of stakeholders, including unions, advocacy groups, and political parties, the Mexican Ministry of Health developed a new universal insurance plan, known as Seguro Popular.
Dean Frenk stressed that health-system reform must be guided by ethical considerations. Health systems reflect values, he said. In Mexico, policymakers sought to promote the value that “health care is not a commodity or a privilege, but a social right,” Dean Frenk said. The right to health care had been recognized in the Mexican Constitution but not everyone had equal ablility to exercise the right, noted Dean Frenk. Seguro Popular was seen as an important step in addressing the country’s health inequities.
Through Seguro Popular, Mexican citizens now have the right to similar treatment for similar needs. They have two explicit packages of health care services: one for primary and secondary care, which covers 250 essential preventive and curative treatments for conditions of high incidence and relatively low cost; the second includes 18 high-cost interventions covering HIV/AIDS, critical neonatal complications, and breast cancer, among other conditions.
Said Pete Witzler, student program organizer for PHR’s Health Action AIDS Campaign: “[Dean Frenk’s] commitment to engaging the educational community to create a culture of human rights among health professional students is an inspiration to students involved in our program.”
Stephen Marks, HSPH’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights, also spoke at the conference. He was on the opening panel, “Realizing the Right to Health.” Other speakers included Stephen Lewis, former United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS to Africa. Lewis was HSPH’s Commencement speaker in 2005.
-- Amy Roeder. Photo by Ben Greenberg/Physicians for Human Rights
