How Can Canadians Help Lead The Global Fight for Health Equity?

In 2020, while wealthy countries stood first in line for COVID-19 vaccines, a pioneering group of South African lawyers sued their own government for a look inside the secret deals Pretoria had signed with vaccine manufacturers and producers. Their victory exposed several one-sided terms, bullying and how much more South Africa had paid for vaccines than EU countries. It also revealed the power of human rights law in the fight for global health equity.

Fatima Hassan, the human rights lawyer who led that effort, will deliver the 2024 Boehm Public Lecture at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health in partnership with CBC Ideas, Canada’s flagship broadcast about contemporary thought. Ms. Hassan will ask Canadians to join her in exploring the concept of solidarity and leadership in pandemic, epidemic and war responses and explain why, in an era of era of rampant commercialization and commodification of life-saving medicines, health care must be secured as a global public good.

About Fatima Hassan and the Health Justice Initiative

Fatima Hassan is Director of Health Justice Initiative (HJI), a Cape Town-based NGO that uses the law, research, and advocacy to tackle the factors shaping inequity in health access; HJI also works towards ensuring access to lifesaving diagnostics, treatment, and vaccines. As a human rights lawyer and social justice activist during the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s, Ms. Hassan, with others, helped lead the fight for people in Africa to access anti-retrovirals and acted for the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in many of its legal cases challenging the South African government’s AIDS denialism and pharmaceutical profiteering. She is the recipient of the 2022 Calgary Peace Prize and is a 2023 Echoing Green Fellow. Ms. Hassan is the recipient of the Franklin Thomas South African Constitutional Court Fellowship and the Tom and Andi Bernstein Distinguished Human Rights Fellowship at Yale University’s School of Law. She has ALSO worked as a Ministerial Advisor in South Africa, and headed the Open Society Foundation office in South Africa. She is an advisory member of Resolve To Save Lives.

About the Boehm Public Lecture

The Boehm Lecture was established at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health in 2018 by Professor Leslie Boehm, a pioneer in the study of Canadian health policy. Its goal is to present Canadians with a fresh look at a “wicked problem” affecting Canada and the global health system, so that we can imagine new solutions through shared consideration. In order to include the widest number of Canadians, the 2024 Boehm Lecture is being produced in partnership with CBC Radio One’s national program of contemporary thought: Ideas.