SPEECH BY SHRI K.R. NARAYANAN, PRESIDENT OF INDIA, WHILE INAUGURATING THE "INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON GLOBAL HEALTH LAW"

NEW DELHI, DECEMBER 5, 1997

It gives me great pleasure to associate myself with this International Conference on Global Health Law being organized by the Indian Law Institute. This prestigious Institute is engaged in creating greater awareness about legal aspects of major social issues of national and international importance. In the past they have hosted very successful Conferences on Shaping the Future by Law, Global AIDS Law and Global Drugs Law, issues that are of crucial significance to every country and to the international community as a whole. This conference represents an important effort to strengthen the instrumentality of Law for improving public health. In to-day's world not only peace and prosperity are indivisible, but health of the people is also indivisible. Public health law will have to leap the frontiers of countries and encompass the whole globe and humanity. As an authority has put it "The reach of public law will have to be as broad as the reach of public health itself."

The law of public health is based fundamentally on the laws of nature and on the principles of good living. Mahatma Gandhi has once remarked that "It is established beyond doubt that the ignorance of and the neglect of the laws of health and hygiene are responsible for the majority of diseases to which mankind is heir". Putting the same thought in sophisticated language, a modern medical scientist, Thomas Mckeown, of the Birmingham Medical School, has said: "The most important medical advance of the nineteenth century was the discovery that infectious diseases were largely attributable to environmental conditions, and could often been prevented by control of the influences which led to them. The most important advance of the twentieth century is the recognition of that the same is true of many non-communicable diseases". As medical science makes even more spectacular discoveries in the oncoming 21st century in the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases, I believe the conclusion would remain the same that most diseases originate from the flagrant violations of the laws of nature, and the deteriorating environmental conditions and distorted living styles. Laws and legislations, therefore, will have to address to the problem of regulating the general conditions that give rise to dangers to public health as well as the particular reasons that produce specific illnesses.

The international Conventions have devoted considerable attention to issues relating to the health of the world population. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, guarantees to everyone "the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in the circumstances beyond his control". The Indian Constitution in the Directive Principles, says that "the State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing that health and strength of workers, men and women, and the tender age of children are not abused and that citizens are not forced by economic necessity to enter avocation unsuited to their age or strength." It also provides that State shall endeavour to protect and improve the environment.

The judiciary in India has elaborated these provisions of the Constitution and consistantly emphasized the rights of community and the individual to health as inseparable aspects of the right to life and personal liberty enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution. Besides the Courts have brought doctors under the jurisdiction of the Consumer Protection Act to curb unethical and predatory commercial practices. As far as law and legislations are concerned we have developed an impressive network that governs major aspects of public health ranging from the standards of education

required for doctors which is regulated by the Indian Medical Council Act, the quality of drugs by the Drugs and Narcotics Act, food safety by the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act. Efforts are being made to devise suitable legislation to control tobacco usage, a major cause of cancer. Unfortunately, our legislation does not prevent effectively alluring advertisements for tobacco and alcoholic drinks without any warning about their injurious effects on health. We have also initiated legislation to control environmental pollution and the Courts are stepping in to limit this rapidly spreading danger to the health of the community.

On the national and global level enormous new dangers to the health of humanity have arisen out of the high and artificial styles of affluent living, besides those arising from poverty and lack of social and economic development. HIV/AIDS is a disease that is sweeping the world to-day. Apart from advance in medical science new laws as well as education and creation of awareness among people are required to fight this menace to human health and life. Narcotic drugs trafficking is another pervasive danger to health that has been growing in alarming proportions. Years ago, the famous author of Cellular Biology, Rudolf Virchow wrote that "Medicine is a social science, and politics are nothing else but medicine on a large scale." Seeing the present escalation in drug-trafficking in the world, and its integral links with easy and enormous profit-making and its combination with politics, particularly the politics of terrorism, one is tempted to assert that not only medicine is a social science and politics are nothing but medicine on a large scale, but it has to become, in combination with law, a counter to the dismal science of economics and the callous art of subversive politics.

Medical technology is to-day perfecting the transplantation of human and animal organs. This is a development promising unprecedented benefits to humankind, but it is also replete with opportunities for abuse. Laws have to be made nationally and globally against the abuses of this kind of scientific advance. I am glad to say that the Transplantation of Human Organs Act in India provides for restrictions on removal of transplantations of human organs and commercial dealings in them for the sake of economic profits.

Pre-natal diagnosis developed by medical science and technology is another development open to abuse against the interests, the status and the dignity of women, and against the sanity of human society. The heartless discrimination and the killing of the female child even before birth is the main abuse to which the new discovery is put, especially in a society dominated by male values. The Indian Parliament has enacted the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act. But often the provisions of this Act are evaded in collusion between clients and doctors. This brings us to the point of the supreme importance of the health of women. The State and the Law have to step in to protect the health of this weakest section of society for the sake of the health of women and for the sake of the health of society as a whole. It has been proved that the health, the happiness, and the prosperity of a society is a great deal dependent on women. The Education of women, the health status of women, the empowerment of women are the propellants of the progress of a society. I am confident that this prestigious Conference, while discussing public health law in all its totality, would give due consideration to law as it impinges upon the weaker sections of humanity.

I am happy to participate in this Conference and I wish its deliberations every success.