2002 Articles

Shifting Visions: "Delegation" Policies and the Building of a "Rights-Based" Approach to Maternal Mortality

Freedman, Lynn P.

Rights-based approaches fold human rights principles into the ongoing work of health policy making and programming. The example of delegation of anesthesia provision for emergency obstetric care is used to demonstrate how a rights-based approach, applied to this problem in the context of high-mortality countries, requires decision makers to shift from an individual, ethics-based clinical perspective to a structural, rights-based public health perspective.