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Organization and was later also mentioned in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights in 1948. The International Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights, which was adopted in 1966 and Iran is one of 148
countries that have so far signed it, has laid out the details and practical
stages for gradually realizing the “right to health” in member states. It has
been also mentioned that one of those stages is access to all facilities and
services that are related to health and treatment. However, the General
Comment No. 14 on this covenant, which was adopted at the twenty-
second session of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
on 11 August 2000 and is about the right to the highest attainable standard
of health, is considered as the first international document that has more
clearly discussed the rules related to four main factors of this right. These
four factors include availability, accessibility, suitability and the guaranteed
quality of medical instruments and services, including essential medicines.
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The World Health Organization drew up a list in 1977, known as WHO
Essential Medicines List (EML), which included the names of those
medicines, which should be accessible to the general public in all countries.
The list at first contained the names of 204 articles of essential medicines
for all kinds of diseases. The list was then frequently updated in later years.
The organization has in recent years put more emphasis on the necessity
of making sure about people’s access to medicines as well as the quality
of medicines and technologies related to medical services, and has also
included the issue of access to medicines among its medium-term strategic
goals for the period between 2008 and 2013.
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