Our Aim

Nurses are essential in transforming health care and health systems such that no person is left behind, without access to care or impoverished because of their need for health care.

ICN believes that health is a human right.  We are at the forefront of advocating for access to health and nurses are key to delivering it. Ensuring that we have enough nurses and other health care workers is a critical enabler of the human right to health.

Nurses can be a voice to lead by supporting a people-centred approach to care and the health system, and by ensuring their voices are heard in influencing health policy, planning, and provision.

They are key to achieving the right to health for everyone; no matter the location, no matter the setting. Health is a human right.

Health systems are an essential element of a healthy and equitable society. When health is viewed as a human right, there is a demand on us to take action and a responsibility to enable access to a health system.

This belief should be the cornerstone of an effective system, and the benefits of this will ultimately flow to communities and countries.

The right to health is more than a catch phrase for health workers, civil society groups and non-government organizations in an effort to positively change the world.

In the majority of cases, the right to health is a legal instrument that can be used to hold governments and the international community to account.

It can and it should be used as a constructive tool for the health sector to provide the best care for individuals, communities and populations.

Health is a human right

The right to the highest attainable standard of health is recognised in the constitution of many countries and numerous binding international human rights treaties.

But what does the right to health mean and how can it be put into practice? As policy makers grapple with this problem, nurses have an indispensable role to play in answering this question and delivering the standard of care required to achieve it.

Currently, the majority of “health systems around the world are mainly focused on disease rather than on as a person as a whole, whose body and mind are linked and who needs to be treated with dignity and respect.”

Nurses are essential in transforming health care and health systems such that no person is left behind, without access to care. Universal Health Coverage (UHC) necessitates placing the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities at the centre of the health system and of the economic development of the country. 

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