ABSTRACT
A human right to health was first proclaimed in the Constitution of the World Health Organization in 1946 and was reiterated in a different form – a right to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and of his family – in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The right to health has since appeared in many forms in different human rights documents but its definitive statement appears as article 12 in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UN General Assembly 1966a) and is worth repeating here:
1 The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.
