The right to health is the economic, social and cultural right to the highest attainable standard of health. It is recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 states that "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health, and wellbeing of himself and his family...". The Preamble to the World Health Organisation's (WHO) constitution also declares that it is one of the fundamental rights of every human being to enjoy "the highest attainable standard of health". Inherent in the right to health is the right to the underlying conditions of health as well as medical care. Franklin D. Roosevelt advocated a right to medical care in his 1944 proposal for a Second Bill of Rights.

The United Nations further defined the right to health in Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1966. The Covenant guarantees the "right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health", and calls for the "provision for the reductions of . . . infant mortality and for the healthy development of the child; the improvement of all aspects of environmental and industrial hygiene; the prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational, and other diseases; and the creation of conditions which could assure to all medical service and medical attention in the event of sickness."

Paul Edward Farmer (born October 26, 1959) is an American anthropologist and physician. He is currently the Kolokotrones University Professor at Harvard University, formerly the Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, an attending physician and Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. In May 2009 he was named chairman of Harvard Medical School's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, succeeding his longtime friend and collaborator Jim Kim. On Friday, December 17, 2010, Harvard University's President, Drew Gilpin Faust, and the President and Fellows of Harvard College, named him a Kolokotrones University Professor of Harvard University, the highest honor that the University can bestow on one of its faculty members.

He currently resides in Kigali, Rwanda. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease. Farmer is one of the founders of Partners In Health (PIH), an international health and social justice organization. His work is the subject of Tracy Kidder's 2003 book Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World. He is editor-in-chief of Health and Human Rights Journal. In May 2009, Farmer was named to head the U.S. Agency for International Development, but the nomination was withdrawn. In August 2009, Paul Farmer was named United Nations Deputy Special Envoy to Haiti to assist in improving the economic and social conditions of the Caribbean nation.