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Multinational corporations and infectious disease : embracing human rights management techniques

Salcito, Kendyl and Singer, Burton H. and Weiss, Mitchell G. and Winkler, Mirko S. and Krieger, Gary R. and Wielga, Mark and Utzinger, Jürg. (2015) Multinational corporations and infectious disease : embracing human rights management techniques. Infectious Diseases of Poverty, Vol. 3 , 39.

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Abstract

Global health institutions have called for governments, international organisations and health practitioners to employ a human rights-based approach to infectious diseases. The motivation for a human rights approach is clear: poverty and inequality create conditions for infectious diseases to thrive, and the diseases, in turn, interact with social-ecological systems to promulgate poverty, inequity and indignity. Governments and intergovernmental organisations should be concerned with the control and elimination of these diseases, as widespread infections delay economic growth and contribute to higher healthcare costs and slower processes for realising universal human rights. These social determinants and economic outcomes associated with infectious diseases should interest multinational companies, partly because they have bearing on corporate productivity and, increasingly, because new global norms impose on companies a responsibility to respect human rights, including the right to health. We reviewed historical and recent developments at the interface of infectious diseases, human rights and multinational corporations. Our investigation was supplemented with field-level insights at corporate capital projects that were developed in areas of high endemicity of infectious diseases, which embraced rights-based disease control strategies. Experience and literature provide a longstanding business case and an emerging social responsibility case for corporations to apply a human rights approach to health programmes at global operations. Indeed, in an increasingly globalised and interconnected world, multinational corporations have an interest, and an important role to play, in advancing rights-based control strategies for infectious diseases. There are new opportunities for governments and international health agencies to enlist corporate business actors in disease control and elimination strategies. Guidance offered by the United Nations in 2011 that is widely embraced by companies, governments and civil society provides a roadmap for engaging business enterprises in rights-based disease management strategies to mitigate disease transmission rates and improve human welfare outcomes.
Faculties and Departments:09 Associated Institutions > Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH)
09 Associated Institutions > Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) > Former Units within Swiss TPH > Health Impact Assessment (Utzinger)
UniBasel Contributors:Utzinger, Jürg and Weiss, Mitchell G. and Winkler, Mirko S.
Item Type:Article, refereed
Article Subtype:Research Article
Publisher:Biomed Central
e-ISSN:2049-9957
Note:Publication type according to Uni Basel Research Database: Journal article
Language:English
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Last Modified:16 Oct 2017 09:01
Deposited On:10 Apr 2015 09:14

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