Human Rights and COVID-​19

An article by the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, highlights the importance of protecting human rights of marginalized populations during and post-pandemic. Particularly in the case of temporary foreign workers in Canada, a right to health approach is critical.

“The right to health has two dimensions. It’s about access to health care but it’s also about securing the underlying social determinants of health in the realization that health care alone will not satisfy good health among the population,” says Brigit Toebes, Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Groningen, “what we see is that problems surrounding COVID-19 are more prevalent in settings where there’s poverty and other forms of deprivation emphasizing the need to improve socioeconomic living conditions.”