A/HRC/4/28 page 12 health cannot be realized without health professionals. Equally, the classic, traditional objectives of the various health professions can benefit from the new, dynamic discipline of human rights. Human rights can help to reinforce existing, good health programmes, and they can sometimes help to identify new, equitable health policies. They can help to ensure that health policies and programmes are equitable, effective, evidence-based, robust, participatory, inclusive and meaningful to those living in poverty. The supportive role of human rights extends to the provision of medical care, as well as public health. Also, provided it is done in an appropriate manner, framing a pressing health concern as a human rights issue can enhance its legitimacy and importance. In other words, health professionals can use human rights to help them achieve their professional objectives. 42. Health professionals run the key international health organizations, as well as ministries of health across the globe. Naturally, they dominate the health sector, both public and private. Clearly, there is no possibility of putting the right to health - and other health-related rights - into practice without large numbers of well-positioned health professionals understanding and supporting this endeavour. In short, there is no chance of operationalizing the right to health without the active engagement of many health professionals. 43. Here, however, is a very major problem. To be blunt, most health professionals whom the Special Rapporteur meets have not even heard of the right to health. If they have heard of it, they usually have no idea what it means, either conceptually or operationally. If they have heard of it, they are likely to be worried that it is something that will get them into trouble. The problem is partly one of language: while health and human rights have much in common, the language used is often different. That is one of the reasons why the Special Rapporteur is presently completing a short paper on the complementary relationship between equity (a term familiar to many health professionals) and human rights. 44. Earlier in this section, the Special Rapporteur argues that some health professionals have recently begun to take human rights, including the right to health, more seriously. This is undoubtedly true and very encouraging. However, if further progress is to be made towards the operationalization of the right to health, many more health professionals must begin to appreciate the human rights dimensions of their work. The message must be conveyed much more clearly and widely that the right to health, and other health-related rights, are allies and assets for health professionals to use. Health professionals can use health-related rights to help them devise more equitable policies and programmes; to place important health issues higher up national and international agendas; to secure better coordination across health-related sectors; to raise more funds from the Treasury; to leverage more funds from developed countries to developing countries; in some countries, to improve the terms and conditions of those working in the health sector; and so on. It is crucial that many more health professionals come to appreciate that the right to the highest attainable standard of health is not just a rhetorical device, but also a tool that can save lives and reduce suffering, especially among the most disadvantaged. 45. Listening to those health professionals who disregard the potential of human rights to assist their work, it sometimes becomes clear that they do not understand some elementary features of the right to the highest attainable standard of health. Some do not appreciate that the right to health is subject to progressive realization (of course a State is not expected to realize the right immediately). Others do not grasp that the right to health is subject to resource availability