Realizing the right to health requires a strong focus on strengthening health care systems and transforming health systems for women. Taking a human rights approach to health means understanding the underlying social determinants of this right, as well as how to ensure the right to health is realized in times of emergency and armed conflict, and for all groups in society, including migrants and refugees, indigenous people, prisoners and detainees, and others. In this third volume of the Swiss Human Rights Book series, leading international experts in human rights and health address is-sues such as access to essential medicines and HIV/AIDS, trade and health, SARS and malaria, and human rights approaches to other key health chal-lenges. They address the role of governments, non-state actors and health-care practitioners, and the responses of multinational institutions, and overview some of the strategies for realizing the right to health.

Scott Jerbi is Senior Adviser, Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative. Previously he worked as a human rights officer in the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Before joining the United Nations, Scott was a Program Coordinator with the Amherst Wilder Foundation, a non-profit health and human services organization serving low-income individuals and families in central neighbourhoods and communities in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA. He received his BA from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, USA; MBA from the University of Miami, USA; and Master's in International Relations from the University of Cambridge, UK.