The right to health imposes four essential standards on healthcare services: Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability and Quality. This is also called the AAAQ Framework.
Availability of services requires that public health and healthcare facilities are available in sufficient quantity, taking into account a country’s developmental and economic condition.
The health system has to be accessible to all. Accessibility has four overlapping dimensions:
- Non-discrimination: health facilities, goods and services must be accessible to all, especially the most vulnerable.
- Physical accessibility: health facilities, goods and services must be within safe physical reach of all parts of the population.
- Economic accessibility (affordability): health services must be affordable for all.
- Information accessibility: accessibility includes the right to seek, receive, and impart information concerning health issues. For example, governments must ensure that young people have access to sexual and reproductive health education and information presented in an unbiased manner.
Acceptability requires that health services are ethically and culturally appropriate, i.e. respectful of individuals, minorities, peoples, and communities, and sensitive to gender and life-cycle requirements.
Quality requires that health services must be scientifically and medically appropriate and of the highest quality.