Health and Rights: principles for action

Abstract

The concern with the health differences among population segments has led to the mapping of the disparity in the form of how people get sick and die. The absence of the avoidable and unfair unnecessary differences has been called equity. The unfairness is the result of a judgment undertaken in the context of a specifi c society, according to historically subscribed to social values. Terms such as equality, social justice, morals and human and social rights are intimately related to the current idea of equity. The objective of this text is to briefl y systemize the ideas of human rights and analyze, as an example, data regarding premature death by cerebrovascular disease (DCV) in large municipalities of the state of São Paulo. Health is considered a social right under the coverage of the rights of solidarity and not just the individual possibility of paying for services, but the right to not become sick. Heath comes close to the central idea of life quality and makes up one of the elements of citizenship. Therefore, equity is reaffi rmed as a principle which should necessarily permeate all and every formulation and practice in the area of health. The
study of premature death by DCV reveals the enormous disparity of rates between comparable municipalities according to the Indice Paulista de Responsabilidade Social (Paulista Index of Social Responsibility - IPRS). The municipalities of Santana de Paraíba, with the lowest rate among 73 municipalities, and Guarujá with the greatest, are in Group 2.