A/HRC/4/28 page 16 provision of Nevirapine, an antiretroviral drug used to prevent mother-to-child-transmission (MTCT) of HIV.45 Applying the concepts of progressive realization and resource availability, the Constitutional Court confirmed that the Government must “act reasonably to provide access to the socio-economic rights identified in the Constitution on a progressive basis” and it ordered the authorities to “devise and implement, within its available resources, a comprehensive and co-ordinated programme to recognise progressively the rights of pregnant women and their new-born children to have access to health services to combat MTCT of HIV”. This case is discussed in more detail in paragraph 72. 61. The South African Constitutional Court also reflected on the issue of resource availability in the case Soobramoney v. Minister of Health KwaZulu Natal.46 The applicant suffered from chronic renal failure and required dialysis to survive. His condition was diagnosed as irreversible. While he was initially able to pay for private treatment, he ran out of funds and sought treatment in a State-funded hospital. Due to its limited resources, the hospital was not able to provide dialysis to all patients. The hospital had therefore adopted a policy and guidelines regarding access to dialysis. Only patients who suffered from acute renal failure, which can be treated and remedied by dialysis, were automatically entitled to treatment. For patients suffering from chronic renal failure, the primary requirement for admission to the dialysis programme was eligibility for a kidney transplant. Patients also suffering from significant vascular or cardiac diseases were not eligible for a transplant. Mr. Soobramoney failed to satisfy the hospital requirements for dialysis. 62. The Bill of Rights provides: “No one may be refused emergency medical treatment.”47 In Mr. Soobramoney’s case, had the hospital violated this provision of the Bill of Rights? The Court held that it had not because the patient was not an “emergency” in the sense of a sudden catastrophe; rather, his condition was an “ongoing state of affairs”. As already noted in the Treatment Action Campaign case, however, the Bill of Rights also includes a right of access to health-care services, requiring the State to take reasonable measures, within available resources, to achieve the progressive realization of this human right. In Soobramoney, the Constitutional Court found that the hospital’s policy and guidelines were reasonable and fairly applied, and it held that the failure to provide treatment did not violate the Bill of Rights in this case. 63. While many elements of the right to the highest attainable standard of health are subject to progressive realization and resource availability, the right also gives rise to some obligations of immediate effect that are subject to neither. Equal treatment of women and men, for example, is not subject to progressive realization and resource availability. A State may not argue that presently it has insufficient resources to provide equal services for women and men and so, for the time being, it is going to focus on services for men, but it will progressively make available the same services for women over the next few years just as soon as the necessary funds become available. As the next case shows, some courts have held that other elements of the right to health also give rise to immediate obligations that are subject to neither progressive realization nor resource availability. 64. In Paschim Banga Khet Mazdoor Samity v. State of West Bengal, the Supreme Court of India held that the Government could not escape its responsibility, on account of financial constraints, to provide emergency treatment.48 In this case, a man fell from a train and suffered serious head trauma. He was taken to a number of State hospitals but none was able to provide