What contribution have human rights approaches made to reducing AIDS-related vulnerability in sub-Saharan Africa? Exploring the case study of access to antiretrovirals

Abstract

Human rights approaches may offer powerful tools to deal with HIV and AIDS-related vulnerabilities experienced throughout the subcontinent’s endemic regions. This paper examines how such approaches have contributed to remediating health and dignity violations posed by the inaccessibility of antiretrovirals in the region. Increases in regional access and key changes in the causal chain of drug access are explored. Rights-based social campaigns that produced domestic as well as global shifts in related law and policy are described in the key low- and middle-income countries of South Africa, Brazil and Thailand. Finally, I consider the implications of these shifts in relation to the strengths and weaknesses of rights-based approaches to reducing AIDS-related vulnerability in the region, arguing that these experiences indicate the need for structural fixes that codify the right to health at domestic and international levels, so as to entrench the right to medicines and enable social actors and policy-makers alike to better meet essential health needs.