Neglected diseases, poverty and social exclusion: a mere geographic coincidence?

Abstract

The theoretical background is the Right to Development, broadly conceived by Amartya Sen as the synthesis of all the human rights. The poverty and the social exclusion are underlined as obstacles to the realization of such Right to Development, in which the Right to Health is included. The Neglected Diseases are illustrated as consequences of the obstacles to the development, after verifying the coincidence between the geography of such diseases and the global map of poverty and social exclusion. It stresses the importance of the Compulsory Licensing of medicines to the realization of the Right to Access to Medicines and, consequently, the Right to Health, emphasizing such juridical instrument as a legal exception to the patent law, as a legitimate instrument of public health policy and a powerful way to concrete the Right to Development. Finally, it suggests the possibility of responsibility, in the international field, of governmental and non-governmental agents, in light of the imperatives human rights.