Let’s now focus on ESC rights. Budget analysts and human rights advocate have a role to check whether the state is using the maximum available resources towards provision of health services.
It’s important to bear in mind that most governments contend with scarcity of resources and hence spending levels may not always be as expected.
You can determine whether a state if making use of the Maximum Available Resources (MAR) by comparing the health sector budget with the state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and secondly compare the health budget with the total government spending.
According to A Guide to Using budget analysis to advance human rights, Gross Domestic Product is “the total amount that the internal economy of a country generates in one year.” Find the health sector spending as a percentage of GDP as well as the percentage of health sector spending as a percentage of total government spending and interpret what that means.
If there is no sustained health spending with respect to GDP, is shows a downward trend, the it means that resources that would have been available for health might have been spent elsewhere.
Comparison with other programs
It is important to compare health sector spending with spending in other programs. That is comparison with other non-esc areas.
Failure to absorb budgets has also been a big problem around the world. This means that there is a budget and resources are available but they end up not being spent at the end of the financial year.
Analysis of components of the public budgets and how it affects various segments of the society
In your analysis you can be more specific and look into issues such as maternal and child health.
General Comment 14 of ICESCR emphasizes the importance of reproductive, maternal and infant health as a component of the right to health.
Experience from various public budget analysts has shown that some issues are given more attention during the allocation of resources and less attention during the execution of the same budgets. That is one of the reasons which can be given on why less resources are spent than what is budgeted for.
When conducting budget analysis, it is important to create another layer of that analysis by incorporating expert opinions relevant to the issues at hand. For instance,find out what experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) saying about the issue at hand.
Prevention and treatment of diseases
Article 12 (c) of the International Covenant for ESC Rights (ICESCR) provides that state parties have to demonstrate the steps taken to achieve full realization of the right to health including on prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases.
It is important to look into issues such as the number of hospital beds in various counties. How many beds are there for every 100,000 people? Is it 1 bed for every 2,000 people? What is the national average? What is the state for people living in major urban cities in the country?
Doctor’s Offices per 100,000 people
Find out how many doctor’s offices per 100,000 people we’ve in your county of interest.
Doctor visits per 100,000 people
We can discover inequality when we look at the number of doctor visits per 100,000 people.
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