Access to an Available Service: Non-Discrimination, Reasonableness and the Right to Health in the Codification of Uzbek Health Legislation

Abstract

Rights-based claims about preventive health services are usually framed as demands for new provision, and meet the resource objection available under progressive realisation. This article advances a different claim. Where a diagnostic service is already recognised as clinically indicated and already provided within a health system, but reaches children according to place of residence and family means rather than clinical need, the obligation engaged is non-discrimination, which is of immediate effect. Drawing on General Comment No. 20 and on comparative constitutional jurisprudence concerning restricted access to available interventions, the article applies this framework to the codification of Uzbek health legislation.
Keywords: right to health; non-discrimination; place of residence; accessibility; health legislation; Uzbekistan; developmental dysplasia of the hip