Three HIV/AIDS patients in Kenya announced Tuesday they will petition the country’s Constitutional Court to declare a new anti-counterfeiting act illegal because it could deny them access to generic medicines. The move, which has the support of public health groups across the country, seeks to have the 2008 Anti-Counterfeiting Act made unconstitutional on the grounds that it could rob them of their right to life. The anti-counterfeiting law’s definition of counterfeits is so vague that it could include generic drugs and allow a pharmaceutical company to charge patent infringement in Kenya even if its patent is not registered there. International donors who fund much of the drug distribution, including the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, rely almost exclusively on generics manufacturers for their supply. The Kenyan act has gained widespread attention abroad because it is being used as a partial template for similar anti-counterfeiting bills in Uganda, Tanzania and other African nations.
Values, Policies and Rights
Hundreds of Kenyan girls, including some as young as three years old, filed a petition in the High Court on 11 October 2012 to try to force the police to investigate and prosecute rape cases they say have been ignored. The group of more than 240 girls accuse police of demanding bribes to investigate rape, refusing to record rapes unless the victims produced witnesses, and claiming victims had consented. One in five women and girls are victims of sexual violence in Kenya, according to a 2008/9 government survey. Rape is rarely reported due to stigma and a lack of faith in the police and the criminal justice system, although Kenya has strong legislation to protect children from sexual assault. Activists point out it is the first time in Kenya that action has been taken to hold police accountable for failing to protect girls from rape.
The writer of this article discusses conflicting conditions for homosexual people in Kenya with impact on health. On the one hand there has been increased visibility of Kenya’s gay community in recent years, despite the fact that homosexuality is illegal in the country, with greater social networking and collaborative efforts between the gay community and sex workers, civil society, parastatals and professional bodies. On the other hand the author also observes harmful practices of ‘corrective rape’ (where lesbians are raped), homophobia in schools, high suicide rates among gays and lesbians, and discrimination such as in the stoning of a suspected gay man in a Nairobi slum.
This paper assesses the extent to which Health in All Policies (HiAP) is being translated into the process of governmental policy-making and is supported by international development partners and non-state actors. A qualitative case study was performed, including a review of relevant policy documents and 40 key informants with diverse backgrounds. Kenya is facing major health challenges that are influenced by various social determinants, but the implementation of intersectoral action focusing on health promotion is still arbitrary. On the policy level, little is known about HiAP in other government ministries. Many health-related collaborations exist under the concept of intersectoral collaboration, which is prominent in the country’s development framework of Vision 2030, but with no specific reference to HiAP. The paper highlights that political commitment from the highest office would facilitate mainstreaming the HiAP strategy, for example by setting up a department under the President’s Office. The budgeting process and planning for the Sustainable Development Goals were found to be potential windows of opportunity. While HiAP is being adopted as policy in Kenya, it is still perceived by many stakeholders as the business of the health sector, rather than a policy for the whole government and beyond. The authors propose that Kenya’s Vision 2030 use HiAP to foster progress in all sectors with health promotion as an explicit goal.
Kofi Annan speaks with the unhurried, temperate tone of someone confident of being listened to. Last week the former UN secretary-general met his match, however, in the form of hundreds of Sowetan schoolchildren blowing vuvuzelas in a football stadium. "Silence please," Annan was forced to plea as his speech was interrupted, something that can rarely have happened to him at the UN general assembly or even mediating in Syria.
Annan warned the audience drawn from 190 countries that the benefits of globalisation have not been shared fairly and the gap between rich and poor is unsustainable. It is a theme that he shares further on in this interview with the Guardian. There must be greater accountability and transparency, he says, to ensure Africa's vast natural resources benefit all its people.
The Supreme Court in the United Kingdom announced in April a verdict in the landmark case of the Zambian communities consistently polluted by Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), a subsidiary of British miner Vedanta Resources Plc, allowing them to have their case against the parent company and its subsidiary tried in the UK. The ruling sets a strong legal precedent which will allow people with claims against subsidiaries of British multinationals to sue the parent company in the UK. The judgment by Chief Justice Lady Hale, and four further judges, re-affirms the rulings of the Court of Technology and Construction in 2016 and the Court of Appeal in 2017. Lady Hale refused Vedanta’s pleas in appealing the former judgments stating that, contrary to the claims of Vedanta’s lawyers the claimants do have a bona fide claim against Vedanta; the company does owe a duty of care to the claimants, especially in view of the existence of company-wide policies on environment and health and safety. The judgement noted that the size and complexity of the case, and the lack of funding for claimants at ‘at the poorer end of the poverty scale in one of the poorest countries of the world’ means that they do not have substantive access to justice in Zambia. This has wider implications for other communities affected by multinational mining.
As part of basic building-blocks to develop a solid foundation for WHO's emerging work on health and human rights, a Global Database on Health and Human Rights Actors has just been launched on WHO Health and Human Rights website. This database contains information gathered from a survey of organizations concerning their structures and programs. It is searchable by country (where the organization is located) or by specific health issue.
In 2014, the EAC regional Technical Working Group for Communicable and Non-Communicable Diseases conceived the idea of developing a regional plan for preparedness and response to public health emergencies. ECSA-HC, through the World Bank-funded East Africa Public Health Laboratory Networking Project, supported the drafting and development of the initial version of the plan. This is a multi-hazard preparedness and response plan whose scope includes epidemic prone diseases, and other known and unknown hazards that may have overwhelmed individual countries or are spreading across international border(s) in the EAC region. The Incident Command System describes teams of stakeholders involved in triggering and managing the preparedness, response and recovery phases of public health emergencies, all implemented in a One Health context. The command system is triggered by the national disease surveillance system at a point they determine to be in need of regional assistance. The plan was launched on June 11th 2019 at a ceremony in Namanga at the inauguration of the field simulation exercise for a fictitious Rift Valley fever outbreak spreading across the border between Kenya and Tanzania. ECSA-HC provided technical support in the planning and execution of the World Health Organization-led exercise.
The organized efforts of the state to protect its citizens from threats to the public's health presuppose some commonality of health beliefs and behaviors, and legislation underpinning public health interventions is premised on the beliefs and behaviors of the population majority. To what extent, in a public health emergency, can members of a cultural or religious minority use human rights arguments to justify exemption from public health measures on the basis of offensiveness of those measures to cultural or religious beliefs? Any such challenge cannot rely on arguments based on autonomy of the individual. The person objecting to the public health measure will need to establish that the burden of compliance will be significantly greater because of offensiveness of that measure to belief, so as to impose on the individual a burden disproportionate to the risk to health of the public as a whole.
Women suffering domestic abuse who are financially dependent on their abusers can now report the crime with the assurance that they will be able to get financial and medical support from the state, thanks to Angola’s new law on domestic violence. Women’s campaigners have welcomed the introduction of the new law, which was signed into the statue books on 8 July 2011, and which criminalises domestic violence and offers protection to victims and their families. Until now domestic violence had not been illegal in Angola – and on the rare occasions it reached court, it was prosecuted under rape, assault and battery laws. The new law guarantees support to victims, through safe houses, medical treatment and financial and legal help. In addition, violence has been designated as a ‘public crime’, which means anyone can report it to the police, not just the victim. However, no details have yet been given about how much money will be made available to victims.