Health and children’s rights

The importance of good health to all children is well recognised and under Article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), all children have the right to enjoy the highest attainable standard of health, to facilities for the treatment of disease and to access healthcare services. However, children face many, diverse challenges exercising their right to health and there is a huge gulf between the right to health and healthcare and its effective enjoyment by children around the world. The child’s right to health is frustrated by healthcare systems that are inaccessible, expensive, inequitable or poor in quality (Harris et al., 2011;Huber et al., 2008). Child mortality, although improving, continues to be a serious problem, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where children under five are 16 times more likely to die than children in the developed world (WHO, 2013). The fact that more than half of the world’s early child deaths (6.5 million in 2012) are due to conditions that could be prevented or treated with access to simple, affordable interventions, highlights the complexity of the problem (WHO, 2013). The challenge in implementing the right to health and healthcare thus varies from situations that frustrate the right to access health and healthcare, those that undermine the right to health and those that threaten the way in which the right is protected and realised.