A/67/302 approach requires the equitable allocation of health funds and resources and recognizes the essential role international assistance plays in ensuring that adequate funds and technical resources are available for health globally, particularly for lowincome States. The approach emphasizes the importance of prioritizing funding for primary health care in striking a balance among financing the primary, secondary and tertiary care sectors. Finally, the right to health approach recognizes the resource divide among rural, remote and urban areas and requires States to equitably allocate health funds and resources to rural and remote areas to ensure the availability and accessibility of good quality health facilities, goods and services in those areas based on the principle of non-discrimination. II. Conceptual framework 5. Health financing is a central component of the right to health and instrumental to full realization of the right to health as articulated in article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, elaborated by General Comment No. 14 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Numerous other international and regional instruments, such as the Declaration of Alma-Ata adopted at the International Conference on Primary Health Care in 1978 and the Abuja Declaration on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Other Related Infectious Diseases, adopted by the African Union in 2001, have also recognized the centrality of health financing to the stability and effectiveness of health systems and meeting international development goals. States therefore have an obligation to ensure adequate, equitable and sustainable funding for health. The primary concerns of health financing are: how States ensure that adequate funds are available for health and the sources from which they raise those funds; how the funds are pooled; and how funds and resources are allocated within health systems to ensure universal access to good quality health facilities, goods and services. The right to health approach provides a conceptual framework through which each of these key concerns may be addressed. A. Ensuring adequate funds and prioritizing health financing 6. States have an obligation under the right to health to ensure that adequate funds are available for health and to prioritize financing for health in their budgets. That obligation is a necessary prerequisite to the realization of nearly every aspect of the right to health and required under States’ obligation to make use of maximum available resources to ensure full realization of the right (General Comment No. 14, para. 33). As elaborated in General Comment No. 14, the right to health includes numerous entitlements, such as the availability of good quality health facilities and access to essential medicines, which require positive outlays by the State. Adequate public funding is necessary in order to realize these positive entitlements. Insufficient expenditure or misallocation of public resources may result in the lack of enjoyment of the right to health by individuals or groups, particularly the vulnerable or marginalized, and amount to a violation of the State’s obligation to fulfil the right to health (General Comment No. 14, para. 52). 7. In order to make use of maximum available resources, States must therefore take all necessary steps to raise adequate revenue and mobilize resources for health 4 12-46101