A/HRC/4/28 page 8 20. Today, one of the most important health and human rights challenges is to enhance enjoyment of the right to health for those living in poverty. With this in mind, one of the Special Rapporteur’s reports explains how consideration of the right to health would have strengthened Niger’s Poverty Reduction Strategy.18 Another sets out how policies deriving from the right to health can help Uganda in its struggle against “neglected” or tropical diseases, i.e. those diseases mostly afflicting those living in poverty.19 The Ugandan report identifies specific, practical health initiatives, such as the development of village health teams, incentives for health workers to serve in remote communities, accessible public health information campaigns, and so on. Another report examines the migration of health professionals from developing to developed States; it shows that this skills drain is a perverse subsidy from poor to rich that further undermines the right to health of those living in poverty in the sending countries.20 Effectively, these reports - as well as others, such as the Mozambican report21 - are exploring how to operationalize the right to health for those living in poverty. 21. General comment No. 14 provides one paragraph on the right to health of indigenous peoples.22 Although this paragraph is highly instructive, it only contains a few sentences. The Special Rapporteur has written three reports with sections on indigenous peoples. One section considers indigenous peoples and the right to health generally,23 while the other two are specific to the indigenous peoples of Peru and Sweden.24 Each chapter includes recommendations for State authorities and other actors. Effectively, all three reports are helping to operationalize the right to health of indigenous peoples. 22. Although trade impacts on the right to health in numerous ways, these issues receive very limited explicit attention in general comment No. 14. In 2004, the Special Rapporteur devoted a report to the relationship between the World Trade Organization and the right to health.25 The report examines issues such as intellectual property in relation to access to medicines, and trade in services in relation to access to health care. Some of these issues were examined further in the Special Rapporteur’s report following his country mission to Peru, specifically in relation to the United States-Peru trade agreement.26 Both reports provide recommendations. In effect, these reports take the general principles outlined in general comment No. 14 and apply them to a number of specific trade issues, thereby helping to operationalize the right to health in relation to intellectual property, trade in services, and so on. 23. Many other examples could be given, but these three - on poverty, indigenous peoples and trade - are sufficient to signal that the Special Rapporteur’s reports have focused on how the right to health can be operationalized. They have moved from the general to the specific. Of course, they do not provide detailed right-to-health programmes; this would require more space and contextualization than is possible in reports of this kind. Nonetheless, the reports identify some of the key practical features that specific right-to-health programmes should encompass. 24. The right to health is one of the most extensive and complex human rights in the international lexicon. The Special Rapporteur’s reports also provide a way of “unpacking” the right to health with a view to making it easier to understand. The most detailed application of this “unpacking” is found in the report on mental disabilities.27 While this report sets out in some detail how the right to health can be operationalized for those with mental disabilities,

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