Limiting Rights and Freedoms in the Context of Ebola and Other Public Health Emergencies

One of the key components of CESCR General Comment No. 14: The Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health (GC 14) is the recognition that human rights are necessarily interdependent and that the social determinants of health are important to the promotion of health itself; as stated in paragraph 3 “…other [human] rights and freedoms [e.g., food, housing] address integral components of the right to health.”
GC 14, paragraph 16 maintains that a right to health also includes the right to control the spread of infectious diseases via a variety of control measures, some of which are restrictive. The use of restrictive measures during infectious disease outbreaks, including measures like quarantine, isolation, and travel prohibitions, restrict or limit basic human rights prescribed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, such as freedom of movement (Article 13) and the right to peaceful assembly (Article 20), for the sake of
protecting and promoting the health of individuals and communities.