The ‘right to the highest attainable standard of health’ (or right to health) is by now firmly embedded in international law. Over the past 20 years there has been a steady stream of documents, reports and other publications clarifying the meaning and contents of the right to health. The most important explanatory source is General Comment 14 of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), which gives an authoritative explanation of the right to health in Article 12 ICESCR. As a result of this clarification process the right to health is by now a norm under international law which has a considerable legal weight and which has the potential to impact on the health and well-being of individuals all over the world. As we now have a fairly clear picture of the normative content of the right to health, the next step is to find out more about how these standards are to be applied in practice. We should assess their content in the light of national realities and current findings in the public health arena, social medicine, health economics and related fields. In other words, if we want to obtain a proper understanding of this norm, we should also look beyond its international definition and doctrinal foundation. We must not look at human rights norms in a vacuum, rather we must reconsider them consistently in the light of national and regional realities and particularities, new trends and developments, and for this we must also look beyond our own disciplinary borders. Examples of such developments are the increasing health inequalities between and within nations, continued health problems such as HIV/AIDS and maternal mortality, the lack of medicines in the developing world, as well as the way in which health systems are organized, such as the increasing worldwide trend of healthcare privatization, and the magnitude of health sector corruption. This study focuses on the implementation of the right to health at regional and national levels. This project brings together a set of experts from thirteen different countries in the world, with each of them analyzing the implementation of the right to health in his or her country or region