IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v121y2014icp48-55.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Right to health, essential medicines, and lawsuits for access to medicines – A scoping study

Author

Listed:
  • Vargas-Peláez, Claudia Marcela
  • Rover, Marina Raijche Mattozo
  • Leite, Silvana Nair
  • Rossi Buenaventura, Francisco
  • Farias, Mareni Rocha

Abstract

Despite countries' efforts to ensure access to essential medicines, some people do not have their needs met, and often resort to the Judiciary to get access to the medicines they need. This phenomenon, known as “judicialization of access to medicines”, has aroused the academia's interest in law, health and social fields. In this context, this scoping study investigates, through qualitative thematic analysis, the approach to judicialization of access to medicines (normative or social) and its possible impacts (positive or negative) described in articles published in scientific journals indexed in the main health databases prior to July 2012. 65 of 384 papers met the inclusion criteria of focusing on lawsuits for access to medicines or judicialization of access to medicines as a phenomenon; empiric studies, review articles or theoretical discussions, written in English, Portuguese or Spanish; most of them were about Brazil, Colombia and England. Results show that judicialization is a complex phenomenon that involves technical-scientific, legal and social aspects. The judicialization impacts mentioned have changed over time. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the emphasis of positive impacts predominated both on the normative and social approaches, having as main reference the movements that claimed from the States the guarantee of access to HIV/AIDS treatment. In the mid-2000s, however, there was an emphasis of the negative effects of judicial intervention, when lawsuits for access to medicines became a problem in some countries. Few studies used the social approach to judicialization. For this reason, there is not enough information about whether lawsuits for access to medicines are related to a real recognition of the right to health as an exercise of citizenship. Such aspects need to be further studied.

Suggested Citation

  • Vargas-Peláez, Claudia Marcela & Rover, Marina Raijche Mattozo & Leite, Silvana Nair & Rossi Buenaventura, Francisco & Farias, Mareni Rocha, 2014. "Right to health, essential medicines, and lawsuits for access to medicines – A scoping study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 48-55.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:121:y:2014:i:c:p:48-55
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.08.042
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953614006352
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.08.042?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:wbk:wboper:13070 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Roberto Iunes & Leonardo Cubillos-Turriago & Maria-Luisa Escobar, 2012. "Universal Health Coverage and Litigation in Latin America," World Bank Publications - Reports 13072, The World Bank Group.
    3. Alicia Ely Yamin & Oscar Parra-Vera, 2009. "How Do Courts Set Health Policy? The Case of the Colombian Constitutional Court," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(2), pages 1-4, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Núria Homedes & Antonio Ugalde, 2016. "Health and Ethical Consequences of Outsourcing Pivotal Clinical Trials to Latin America: A Cross-Sectional, Descriptive Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(6), pages 1-17, June.
    2. Vargas-Peláez, Claudia Marcela & Soares, Luciano & Rover, Marina Raijche Mattozo & Blatt, Carine Raquel & Mantel-Teeuwisse, Aukje & Rossi Buenaventura, Francisco Augusto & Restrepo, Luis Guillermo & L, 2017. "Towards a theoretical model on medicines as a health need," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 167-174.
    3. Julia Simões Corrêa Galendi & Carlos Antonio Caramori & Clarissa Lemmen & Dirk Müller & Stephanie Stock, 2021. "Expectations for the Development of Health Technology Assessment in Brazil," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(22), pages 1-12, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Luzuriaga, María José, 2023. "Health system privatization, the pandemic and deprivatization under discussion," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), April.
    2. Bhalotra, Sonia & Fernandez, Manuel, 2021. "The Right to Health and the Health Effects of Denials," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1376, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    3. Klein, Alexander & Crafts, Nicholas, 2023. "Unconditional Convergence in Manufacturing Productivity across U.S. States: What the Long-Run Data Show," CEPR Discussion Papers 18065, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Whitty, Jennifer A. & Littlejohns, Peter, 2015. "Social values and health priority setting in Australia: An analysis applied to the context of health technology assessment," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(2), pages 127-136.
    5. Adam Wagstaff & Daniel Cotlear & Patrick Hoang-Vu Eozenou & Leander R. Buisman, 2016. "Measuring progress towards universal health coverage: with an application to 24 developing countries," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 32(1), pages 147-189.
    6. Corduneanu-Huci, Cristina & Hamilton, Alexander & Masses-Ferrer, Issel, 2011. "The political economy of healthcare litigation : model and empirical application to Uruguay," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5821, The World Bank.
    7. Wang, Daniel & Vasconcelos, Natália Pires de & Poirier, Mathieu JP & Chieffi, Ana & Mônaco, Cauê & Sritharan, Lathika & Van Katwyk, Susan Rogers & Hoffman, Steven J, 2020. "Health technology assessment and judicial deference to priority-setting decisions in healthcare: Quasi-experimental analysis of right-to-health litigation in Brazil," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    8. Núria Homedes & Antonio Ugalde, 2016. "Health and Ethical Consequences of Outsourcing Pivotal Clinical Trials to Latin America: A Cross-Sectional, Descriptive Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(6), pages 1-17, June.
    9. Diego Gómez‐Ceballos & Isabel Craveiro & Luzia Gonçalves, 2019. "Judicialization of the right to health: (Un)compliance of the judicial decisions in Medellin, Colombia," International Journal of Health Planning and Management, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 1277-1289, October.
    10. David Flood & Sandy Mux & Boris Martinez & Pablo García & Kate Douglas & Vera Goldberg & Waleska Lopez & Peter Rohloff, 2016. "Implementation and Outcomes of a Comprehensive Type 2 Diabetes Program in Rural Guatemala," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(9), pages 1-14, September.
    11. S Katrina Perehudoff & Nikita V Alexandrov & Hans V Hogerzeil, 2019. "The right to health as the basis for universal health coverage: A cross-national analysis of national medicines policies of 71 countries," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(6), pages 1-15, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:121:y:2014:i:c:p:48-55. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.