A/HRC/37/74 76. States and other stakeholders should cooperate with civil society organizations and affected communities and foster their role in ending epidemics and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by protecting and expanding civic space. That should be done by providing an enabling legal, policy and financial environment for civil society organizations and affected communities. States should review policies that restrict civil society space and funding. States should also review and reform laws that may contribute to stigma and discrimination, including criminal and other laws that have been shown to have a negative impact on public health. International agencies should consider the voices of the most affected people in their decision-making processes. 77. States and other stakeholders should increase efforts to address discrimination in health-care settings. Health-care workers should be empowered and recognized as agents who can promote and protect the human rights of patients and communities. Their human rights, including their labour rights, should also be protected. In order to ensure that health workers have the necessary capacity to provide discriminationfree health-care, issues related to human rights, non-discrimination, free and informed consent, confidentiality and privacy should be integrated into pre- and inservice training curricula for health workers. Best practices on such training and education programmes and materials should be shared. 78. Multi-stakeholder and multisectoral alliances should be built. Diverse partners should focus on their strengths and potential to contribute to the promotion of human rights in the context of communicable diseases. The private sector, including businesses and law firms, should engage in empowering communities by providing them with resources and building capacity. Parliamentarians should bridge the gap between communities and governments and unite in alliances to promote good practices across countries. In some contexts, new partners, such as grass-roots movements, national preventive mechanisms against torture and even arms carriers in conflicts, have unique access to otherwise unreachable vulnerable groups and should promote and protect their rights. 79. North-South and South-South cooperation should continue to focus on establishing the infrastructure needed to develop health systems, and to foster partnerships with civil society in countries where health systems are already in place in order to exchange expertise to address similar problems. 80. States should take into account human rights obligations in global health in multilateral and regional discussions and decisions. International and regional human rights mechanisms are encouraged to promote human rights and accountability in health, particularly in the context of HIV and other communicable diseases and epidemics. Good practices and lessons learned from such work should be shared between the different human rights and health mechanisms. 81. A human rights-based approach to access to safe, effective, quality and affordable medicines and vaccines is crucial to the fulfilment of the right to health and should be taken into account in the context of policies related to intellectual property rights and relevant international agreements on the matter. 19