8
RESPONSIBILITY –
IN PUBLIC HEALTH
Florencía Luna, Argentina
Responsibility^74 is a fundamental value for all decisions and actions
in all phases of life and all sectors of society. Responsibility is a key
benchmark for ethical behaviour. The following contribution concen-
trates on the responsibility of Actors in health, especially public health.
Every year, eight million children die before they reach the age of
five. More than 300,000 women die in pregnancy or childbirth and more
than four million people die of AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.^75
On the one hand, global health would appear to be a permanently ir-
resoluble issue: an immutable pending debt. On the other, it reveals a
complexity and variance that makes it a moving target.
I will first present some empirical facts about global health. I will ar-
gue for a multiple strategy with a nuanced and context-specific solution.
Secondly, I will outline possible responsible agents that should tackle
global health. Because of partial compliance and practical obstacles to
putting ideal theories into practice, I will consider a non-ideal approach.
74
This article is republished with the permission of the author given 11th April,
2016. Original title: Law and Global Health: Current Legal Issues Volume 16
edited by Freeman, Hawkes, and Bennett (2014) Chp.17 "Adding Nonideal
Agents to Work Out a Pending Debt" by F. Luna pp.295-307. By permission of
Oxford University Press. 75
L. Gostin et al, ‘National and Global Responsibilities for Health’ Bulletin of
the World Health Organization (2010) 88: 719.