Promoting the Right of Everyone to the Enjoyment of the Highest Attainable Standard of Physical and Mental Health Through Enhancing Capacity-Building in Public Health

Urges Member States and the international community to increase investment, building on existing mechanisms and through partnership, to improve health systems in developing countries and countries with economies in transition with the aim of providing sufficient health workers, infrastructures, management systems and supplies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030;

Calls upon Member States to take the primary responsibility for strengthening their capacity-building in public health to detect and respond rapidly to outbreaks of major infectious diseases through the establishment and improvement of effective public health mechanisms, including full implementation of the International Health Regulations (2005), and strategies for training, recruitment and retention of sufficient public health personnel, and systems of prevention and of immunization against infectious diseases;

Encourages States to promote access to medicines for all, including through the use, to the full, of the provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights which provide flexibility for that purpose, recognizing that the protection of intellectual property is important for the development of new medicines, as well as the concerns about its effects on prices;

Invites Member States to foster public health systems that ensure the realization of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including of those in vulnerable situations;

Encourages United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, in particular the World Health Organization as the lead United Nations agency on health, in accordance with their respective mandates and as appropriate, to continue to address public health concerns in their activities and programmes, and to actively support capacity-building in global public health, such as through the provision of technical and other relevant assistance to developing countries, including the least developed countries, small island developing States and landlocked developing countries;

Encourages the mechanisms of the Human Rights Council, especially the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, within their existing mandates, to continue to address public health concerns in their activities and programmes, and where feasible to support capacity-building in global public health, such as through the provision of technical and other relevant assistance to developing countries;