Health is one of the basic human needs. Without health, doing many things will be either very difficult or impossible for human. This is an obvious issue that does not need any further argument to be proved and human experience during the history confirms this. On the other hand, the state of health can have strengths and weaknesses and any human being can enjoy a level of health (low or high) depending on his/her conditions. Basically, when we talk about promotion of health, we mean an attempt to increase individual and social health. Experts believe health has different dimensions including physical, mental, social, and spiritual (1) though the dimensions of health are not limited to this classification and may also have other dimensions.
In religion, health has been viewed as a divine gift and a blessing for which we should be thankful (to God) and we should appreciate. On this basis, the Prophet (pbuh) stated: “There are two blessings that are not appreciated, safety and health” (2). We can thank God for the blessing of health either by words and in our heart or by actions. When we are told to “appreciate our health”, it means that we need to protect our health, which can be realized by observing the personal and social health protocols. Health can be also viewed as a responsibility and duty meaning that any human is responsible for protecting both his/her own health and the health of the society. For example, when a pandemic with high contagiousness spreads in the society, a person is to prevent infliction by this disease and also prevent inflicting others by observing personal health. In the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, this was confirmed to people by experience that not putting on masks or not keeping social distance and also refusing to inject the vaccine can cause further spread of the disease.
This can be viewed from another perspective, which is “the right of self” and “the rights of other people”. The right of self refers to protection of personal health and the right of the people concerns protection of social health and the responsibility each person has to3ward others’ health. Imam Ali (pbuh) states: God the Most Perfect has set observance of His servants’ health as a prelude to observance of His rights