The Inter-American protection of human and social rights to health

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study the protection of human and social rights to health, both in the Inter-American legislation and jurisprudence, in order to establish the boundaries of this right in the Inter-American context. In this regard, the problematics to be faced consists of finding out: in what ways is the right to health protected by the Inter-American human rights system and the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights? In order to answer this question, the approaches used were deductive; analytical and the bibliographical research technique. The importance of this study is also attached to the confrontation around the subject of justiciability of social rights, mainly, of the right to health, within the Inter-American court. By the end, it was verified that Article 26 of the American Convention on Human Rights, which deals with the progressive development of economic, social and cultural rights, upholds the right to health, allowing its justiciability. However, until 2018, there was no guarantee of the right to health as an autonomous right in the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court – as occurred with the case of Poblete Vilches et al. versus Chile. So far, right to health had not a protection through political and civil rights, that is, indirectly.