Chapter 2 | Page 75 freedom, the right to be free from torture, as well as the right to have access to a system of the highest attainable health services with equal opportunity.148 The right to health is an inclusive right that comprises access to appropriate health care, factors that impact on health such as safe water, sanitation, food supply, nutrition, housing, occupational and environmental conditions and health-related knowledge.149 Thus the right to health involves elements related both to ‘health care’ and to the underlying preconditions for physical and mental health.150 The right to health encompasses elements of availability, accessibility (non-discrimination, physical, economic and information access), acceptability and quality.151 The obligation to recognise the right to education, under Articles 13 and 14, includes the requirement that primary education be compulsory and available free of charge to all and that, secondary education, including technical and vocational education, is to be made available and accessible to all by every appropriate means. There is also an obligation to the progressive introduction of free education. ‘Compulsory education’ is taken to mean that neither the parents, guardians nor the State is entitled to treat it as optional for a child to have access to primary education.152 ‘Free of charge’ should be understood as meaning that primary education should be provided without charge to the child, parent or guardian.153 The Committee identified essential features of the right to education as availability, accessibility (non-discrimination, physical and 148 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No 14: The Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health (article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), 22nd sess, UN Doc E/C.12/2000/4 (11 August 2000), [8]. 149 Ibid., [11]. 150 Brigit Toebes, 'The Right to Health' in Asbjørn Eide, Catarina Krause and Allan Rosas (eds), Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: A Textbook (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht, 2001) 169-190, 174. 151 CESCR General Comment No 14, E/C.12/2000/4, above n 148, [12]; John Tobin, The Right to Health in International Law (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011). 152 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No 11: Plans of action for primary education (article 14 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), 20th sess, UN Doc E/C.12/1999/4 (10 May 1999), [6]. 153 Ibid.