Promoting Public Health through Clinical Legal Education: Initiatives in South Africa, Thailand, and Ukraine

This paper presents the pioneering work of four clinical legal education programs that have partnered with the Law and Health Initiative of the Open Society Institute’s (OSI) Public Health Program.6 In Thailand, the Chiang Mai University Legal Clinic has authored an HIV/AIDS Community Legal Education Manual and is piloting an HIV/AIDS and human rights educational program in prisons, detention centers, and village community centers servicing ethnic minorities.7 In South Africa, students from the Universities of Witwatersrand and Cape Town have conducted workshops on will-writing, debt, and family law for hospice caregivers and nurses working with palliative care patients. In Ukraine, students at the Donetsk National University Medical Law Clinic have provided legal consultations and representation for patients whose human rights were violated in the delivery of health care. And at the University of Pretoria, Master of Laws students drafted a submission to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights requesting both recognition of access to medicines as an essential component of the right to health and a process to ensure implementation.