Main description:

This forward-looking book provides an in-depth analysis of the major transformations of the right to health in Latin America over the past decades, marked by the turn towards the pharmaceuticalisation of health care. Everaldo Lamprea-Montealegre investigates how health-based litigation has deepened inequalities in the global South, exploring the practices of key actors that are reclaiming the right to health in the region.

Taking a deep dive into the health care systems of Brazil and Colombia, Local Maladies, Global Remedies illustrates how transnational pharmaceutical companies are influencing the litigation of health rights, from moulding doctors' preferences for branded drugs to controlling the availability of cheaper generics and bio-similars. The book deploys a wide range of theoretical perspectives and insights from socio-legal literature to map out the practices of stakeholders that are reclaiming the right to health in Latin America. Its concluding remarks propose a set of remedies to help alleviate the challenges faced by global South countries when trying to guarantee their population's right to health, ultimately calling for a major shift of decision-making responsibilities from a local to a global level.

The wide-ranging, interdisciplinary scope of this cutting-edge book will benefit scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and students operating at the intersections between socio-legal studies, sociology, health anthropology, public health, globalisation, and human rights.

Contents:

Contents: The right to health in action: an introduction PART I THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE RIGHT TO HEALTH 1. The elusive search for the minimum core of the right to health 2. The political economy of the right to health: a terrain for contestation 3. The judicialization of health care in the Global South PART II LOCAL MALADIES: THE EPIDEMIC OF THE RIGHT TO HEALTH IN BRAZIL AND COLOMBIA 4. Health system reform and the rise of litigiousness in Brazil and Colombia 5. The HIV/AIDS pandemic and the plight of vulnerable patients: understanding the first wave of litigiousness in Brazil and Colombia (1990-2000) 6. Riding a second wave (2000-2020): the downstream approach and the rise of "high-cost patients" 7. A case study of patients' organizations: between good causes and hidden clients 8. Stopping a litigation epidemic: lessons from Colombia and Brazil's highest courts The promise of the right to health, and why we have to keep it: closing reflections Bibliography Index