82.
In addition, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Costa Rica, in the
recent Judgment 3691 of March 2013, 145 examined the serious obstacles in access to health
care owing to the “waiting lists” that were delaying the provision of medical attention to
many Costa Ricans. The Constitutional Chamber ordered that gradual, but genuine, steps be
taken to eradicate unreasonable waiting lists for the provision of health care services. It
requested that technical studies be undertaken that would allow a plan to be drawn up
within the 12 months following the judgment. According to the Constitutional Chamber, this
plan should define reasonable waiting times for pathology or urgent cases, as well as
objective criteria for defining the inclusion and placement of a patient on the waiting lists.
The Chamber also indicated that it was necessary to establish a timetable showing progress,
and the administrative or technical measures to comply with the goals of the plan, so
that, once the plan had been approved, in these first 12 months, within the following 12
months at the most, the waiting lists establish reasonable waiting times, according to
the respective medical specialty and diagnosis.
83.
Meanwhile, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala 146 has ordered the necessary
medical services that people with HIV/AIDS may require, “understanding that this
obligation entails the necessary medical assistance (consultation and hospitalization as
applicable), medical treatment (provisions of the necessary medicines required by the
said patients, once their situation has been verified based on studies performed by
professionals with the relevant expertise), and the other services designed to preserve
the health and life of these individuals, with the appropriate speed called for by the
circumstances.”
84.
Similarly, the Mexican Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation has established that
the right to protection of health “includes the reception of the basic medicines for the
treatment of an illness, as an integral part of the basic health care services consisting in the
medical care, the curative activities of which signify providing opportune treatment to the
person who is ill, which evidently includes the application of the respective basic medicines,
in keeping with a basic table of health sector inputs. The foregoing, notwithstanding
medicines that have been discovered recently and that there are other ailments that
warrant the same or greater attention from the health care sector, because these are
matters that go beyond the right of the individual to receive the basic medicines for the
treatment of his illness, as an integral part of the right to the protection of health that is
recognized as an individual guarantee, and of the obligation to provide them of the entities
and departments that offer the respective services.” 147 In addition, the Supreme Court has
recognized the normative nature of the right to health established as a fundamental right. 148
145
Supreme Court of Costa Rica, Constitutional Chamber, Judgment 3691, March 13, 2013.
146
Constitutional Court of Guatemala, Case file 1055, June 25, 2008.
147
Ruling of the Court in plenary XIX/2000, entitled: “Health. The right to its protection, which, as an
individual guarantee, is recognized in article 4 of the Constitution, includes the reception of basic medicines for the
treatment of illnesses and their provision by the entities and departments that offer the respective services”
(Semanario Judicial de la Federación y su Gaceta, Ninth period, Volume XI, March 2000, p. 112). Amparo under
review 2231/97. José Luis Castro Ramírez. October 25, 1999. Rapporteur: Justice Mariano Azuela Güitrón; Justice
Sergio Salvador Aguirre Anguiano who was absent endorsed the text. Secretary: Lourdes Ferrer Mac-Gregor Poisot.
148
See ruling of the Court in plenary XV/2011, entitled: “The right to health. Its normative nature”; the text
of which reads: “Our country is experiencing a stage of intense changes in the way in which the normative
substance of the Constitution of the United Mexican States is identified and its consequences for how the amparo
proceeding functions. A specific example of this phenomenon is the change in the understanding, which to date has
been traditional, of rights such as the right to health or to education. In other words, despite their embodiment in
the text of the Constitution, these rights have traditionally be understood as mere declarations of intent, without
much real binding power over the action of citizens and public authorities. It has been understood that their
effective realization was subordinated to specific legislative and administrative actions, in the absence of which the
constitutional justices could not do very much. Now, to the contrary, the basic premise is that, even though in a
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