The African Commission of Health and Human Rights Promoters (CAPSDH) on Wednesday set October 8 for the first monthly human rights advocates and health professionals' think-tank dialogue.
The monthly dialogue on the theme: "Health Professionals' Rights to Industrial Action; Patients' Rights to Medical Care - Whose Rights?" is to create an enabling environment for diagnosis of a human rights paradigm in health and set the pace for combining health knowledge with knowledge of law and ethics.
Speaking at the launch in Accra, Dr Edmund N. Delle, CAPDSH President, said the dialogue also sought to remove the barriers that had separated human rights workers from health care professionals.
"If the right to life is the most basic of all human rights, it follows that the right to health and health care are fundamental rights. To die because you are denied medicine, clean water or adequate nutrition is just as much a violation of your rights to life as it is to die from a death squad bullet," he said.
Dr Delle explained that the human rights field operated in such a way as to protect the individual from the vicissitudes of power that had an impact on his or her life.
"In the field of health, this power may be the state; international policies and programmes; multinational and local drug companies; the medical establishment; and the family and community.
"Yet the rights to health and healthcare have not been a high priority for human rights activists. Despite the rhetoric of the indivisibility of all human rights, there has understandably, perhaps, been a distinct emphasis in the human rights movement on such violations as torture, extrajudicial executions, disappearance and political imprisonment."
He said the dialogue was therefore to create a platform for human rights and health advocates to begin the process of sharing experiences; to stimulate the creation of collaborative networks for research, education, communication and advocacy; and to strengthen national solidarity among people working in health and human rights fields.
Dr Delle noted that in Ghana and most developing countries the national economy cannot sustain adequate medical staffs to meet the demand for health services.
The few medical staff who can be retained are so valuable that the system cannot conceive disciplining them for substandard practices. In many cases, qualified and dedicated medical professionals are frustrated by long hours of work for meagre salaries.
Dr Delle, who is also the Founder of Rabito Group of Clinics, said due to shortage of medical staff, patients were too scared to make any noise, lest they cut themselves off from the opportunity for medical care in the future.
He said it was now time to diagnose these challenges professionally and to strategically develop modalities for the future.
The President of the Apinto Divisional Council in the Wassa West District of the Western region, Nana Kwabena Angu II, who chaired the launch and official outdoor of CAPDSH monthly newsletter, "HEALTHRIGHTS Advocates," lauded the effort of collaboration between health professionals and human rights advocates.
He said the human rights principle that "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights" was a powerful concept in spite of its simplicity.
He stressed that the intricate relationship between health and human rights embraces not only civil and political rights but, first and foremost, the right to health. "This right is relentlessly threatened by economic, geopolitical and social inequities."
Nana Angu tasked CAPSDH to focus also on other health rights issues such as environmental damage and pollution, which had been shown to put community health at risk.
He said while a degree of economic development was vital to improving health standards, there existed a potential conflict between economic development, prosperity and health rights.
Journalists at the launch complained about the frustration of patients in the effort to access full information.
The journalists noted that the decision-making power of patients decreased with lower social, economic or gender status.
"This is more dramatic in communities in which illiteracy is high, public health information is practically non-existent, and the legal system is too weak to be utilized favourably."
Deliberations from the monthly dialogue would be published in CAPSDH's monthly newsletter, which would serve as educational and resources material for the public.
CAPSDH is a non-governmental organization dedicated to the defence and promotion of the ideas enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the African Union's African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.