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One of the fundamental policy questions being raised in recent years is: whether to make health-judicially enforceable; thereby recognising health as a fundamental right. The policy question is whether we have reached the levels of social, economic and political development as a society; so as to make this a justiciable right- implying that its denial is an offense. Questions that need to be addressed are manifold, namely, (a) whether when health care is a sub-national and pluriversal subject, is it desirable or useful to make a central/federal law, (b) whether such a law should mainly focus on the enforcement of public health standards on water, sanitation, food safety, air pollution etc, or whether it should focus on health rights- access to quality health care in terms of equity and affordability, and c) whether focus should be on what the State enforces on citizens or on what a citizen demands of the State?
Right to healthcare covers a wide canvas; encompassing issues of promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative healthcare across rural and urban areas, infrastructure availability, health human resource availability, as also issues extending beyond health as an isolated subject, into the domain of poverty, equity, literacy, sanitation, nutrition, drinking water availability, etc., to mention a few. Excellent health care systems need to be in place to ensure effective implementation of the health rights at the grassroots level. Right to health cannot be perceived unless the basic health infrastructure like doctor-patient ratio, patient-bed ratio, nurses-patient ratio, etc. are near or above threshold levels and uniformly spread-out.
Further, this entails de novo conception of health systems governance and would further involve reconfiguring health systems architecture. Accordingly, the management and administration of overall governance structure of the existing health system would require to be overhauled. The panel invites voices of advocacy and dissent for a deconstruction of the existing and proposed architecture on the “Right to Health” from academia, civil society, policy makers and industry, in formats including but not limited to original research investigation, secondary analysis, case studies etc.