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Right to Health and Responses of the State During Covid-19 Pandemic: An Analysis

Diganta Biswas

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Indian Journal of Communicable Diseases 9(2):p 15-30, July-December 2023. | DOI: https://doi.org/10.21088/ijcd.2395.6631.9223.2

How Cite This Article:

Biswas D. Right to health and responses of the state during COVID-19 pandemic: an analysis. Indian J Comm Dis. 2023;9(2):47-62.

Timeline

Received : February 16, 2023         Accepted : May 31, 2023          Published : June 30, 2023

Abstract

Human Rights are fundamental, inviolable, inalienable. It is the essence to lead a life like a human being. Among the variety of rights, the right to life, liberty, equality and dignity of an individual are of prime importance. Right to health is a fundamental human right. During the COVID-19 Pandemic the right to life was at a toss. At this point, the role of the Supreme Court mainly focused to two aspects, viz. economic one, where the court delved into the cost of COVID-19 testing; and an administrative one, where the court analysed failure in the implementation of the guidelines with respect to patients’ care, hospital management, and infrastructure. The paper aims at analysing the efforts of the state with special emphasis to the judiciary during the COVID-19 pandemic.


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Data Sharing Statement

There are no additional data available. All raw data and code are available upon request.

Funding

This research received no funding.

Author Contributions

Whether all authors contributed significantly to the work and approve its publication.

Ethics Declaration

This article does not involve any human or animal subjects, and therefore does not require ethics approval.

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to the patients, their families, and all those who have contributed to this study.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.


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Cite this article

Biswas D. Right to health and responses of the state during COVID-19 pandemic: an analysis. Indian J Comm Dis. 2023;9(2):47-62.


Licence:

Attribution-Non-commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.



Received Accepted Published
February 16, 2023 May 31, 2023 June 30, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21088/ijcd.2395.6631.9223.2

Keywords

Fundamental RightsDPSPDignityLifeNHRC

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Received February 16, 2023
Accepted May 31, 2023
Published June 30, 2023

licence


Attribution-Non-commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.



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