A/HRC/4/28 page 11 35. Since 1980, the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has taken up about 50,000 cases.33 How many maternal deaths were there in this 26-year period? Well over 10 million. Certainly, the number of disappearances in this period far exceeds 50,000, but nobody suggests that the number approaches 10 million. Despite this, disappearances have generated their own “special procedure” (the Working Group), various international instruments on this specific human rights issue,34 and the relentless attention of many civil society organizations. 36. The death penalty and disappearances are extremely serious human rights issues that fully deserve the human rights attention they have received. But maternal mortality is also an extremely serious human rights problem and it has not received the attention from the human rights community that it deserves. In fact, with a few notable exceptions, maternal mortality has received virtually no attention from the mainstream human rights community. 37. Last year, a number of world leaders - Bill Clinton, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson, Gro Brundtland, Nafis Sidik and many others - adopted a Leaders’ Call to Action on the right to health.35 In this spirit, the time has come for established human rights NGOs to recognize that maternal mortality is a human rights catastrophe on a massive scale. They must campaign against maternal mortality, and other egregious health and human rights issues, just as vigorously as they have taken up the death penalty, disappearances, extrajudicial executions, torture, arbitrary detention and prisoners of conscience. If they decline to do this, then profoundly important health and human rights issues will never become part of the human rights mainstream. F. The pivotal role of health professionals 38. Here the term “health professionals” is used to encompass all those working in the fields of medical care and public health, including health community workers, policymakers, economists and administrators. 39. The Special Rapporteur has submitted over 20 reports on the right to the highest attainable standard of health, and these reports repeatedly confirm the common ground shared between those professionals working in health and those working in human rights. Both groups wish to establish effective, integrated, responsive health systems accessible to all. Both stress the importance not only of access to health care, but also access to water, sanitation, health information and education. Both understand that good health is not the sole responsibility of the Ministry of Health, but a wide range of public and private actors. Both prioritize the struggle against discrimination and disadvantage and both stress cultural respect. At root, those working in health and human rights are both animated by a similar concern: the well-being of individuals and populations. 40. Moreover, these reports not only confirm that health and human rights occupy much common ground; they also show how health and human rights complement and reinforce each other. 41. Obviously, the realization of the right to the highest attainable standard of health depends upon health professionals enhancing public health and delivering medical care. The right to