Articulating human rights to health and the benefits of scientific progress in the assessment and incorporation of medicines: from global to local

• Autor(a) principal: Ventura , Miriam
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Ventura , Deisy de Freitas Lima
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Cadernos Ibero-Americanos de Direito Sanitário (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://www.cadernos.prodisa.fiocruz.br/index.php/cadernos/article/view/856
• topic: Direitos Humanos; Direito à Saúde; Avaliação Tecnológica em Saúde; Legislação & Jurisprudência; Human Rights; Right to Health; Health Technology Assessment; Legislation & Jurisprudence; Derechos Humanos; Derecho a la Salud; Evaluación de la Tecnología Sanitarias; Legislación & Jurisprudencia

From the perspective of the human right to health and to access the benefits of scientific progress, this article examines the legal, institutional and argumentative structure framing the assessment of new technologies and their and incorporation into health systems, as key to guaranteeing access to medicines. The international and Brazilian frameworks were investigated and contrasted by way of a review of documentation and of the international and Brazilian literature, focusing on the repercussions of technical and scientific facts (extrasystemic reasons) on legal statements (systemic reasons), and related reconciliation, in assuring those rights. The locally and globally conceptions were found to predominate, favouring health systems’ economic efficiency and sustainability to the detriment of an ethical and political approach to incorporating pharmaceutical innovations as a human right grounded in solidarity, social justice and equity. Brazil has advanced in the process of evaluating and incorporating new medicines by introducing legal criteria and parameters similar to those of other countries and compatible with international health recommendations. The fragilities observed were instances of increasingly flexible legal criteria for the practice of incorporation, which impose a heavier onus of technical and scientific proof on citizens filing applications; the introduction and ampliation of economic and budget elements into the analyses; and the lack of any provision for user representative participation in the evaluation process, which is so highly valued in other countries. It was concluded that the main tension between the norms and practices examined and human rights is that priority is given to economic, financial and budget considerations over the proven potential health benefits of pharmaceutical innovations. In that respect, the framework examined undermines efforts to assure human rights in health care policies, thus significantly impairing fair and equal access to therapeutic innovations locally and globally.