EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF HEALTH LAW最新文献

Within human rights bodies, mental health in the context of migration hardly constitutes a central theme. However, it is not altogether overlooked; elements of migrants' mental wellbeing are indirectly addressed, notably in relation to ill-treatment, the right to family life, non-discrimination, and equality, among others. This contribution brings together these sparse references and examines whether legal standards can be further developed at the intersection of mental health, migration, and the broader human rights framework. Drawing upon developments from the European Convention on Human Rights - as interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights and complemented by standards of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture - along with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its monitoring committee, the contribution provides a joint framework. It synthesises human rights standards and puts forward concrete recommendations for States to comply with obligations under these instruments and beyond.

This article analyses the emergence of "menstrual legislation" in Europe, with a focus on recent legislative developments in Scotland and Spain, which have both been frontrunners in this area. In 2021, Scotland recognised free access to menstrual products as a universal right in the Period Products (Free provision) Act. In 2023, Spain adopted a comprehensive law, which grants menstrual leave in the workplace, and requires increased information, access to health care, education and research on menstruation. The goal of this article is to examine the extent to which countries can/should look at the Scottish and Spanish legislations as models of legislation on which they can rely for the development of future legislation within the field of menstrual health. To this end, this commentary identifies the benefits, pitfalls, and gaps of the Scottish and Spanish legislations in light of the recent definition of menstrual health, and analyses them from a comparative legal perspective.

Innovative pharmacotherapies such as stem cell-based gene therapy for children experience difficulty receiving financial coverage due to their high costs, barring access for children dependent upon these therapies. This raises the question to which extent states should guarantee financial accessibility of health care for children. Therefore, general principles are deduced using a holistic human rights-based approach with Article 24 CRC as basis. This is the primordial codification for children's human right to health, delineating, e.g. in European context, Article 8 ECHR. It is concluded that health care which is life-saving, improves development, promotes dignity, or results in inhuman treatment if denied, needs to be made financially accessible by the state; except if the implementation is beyond the maximum extent of available resources. These criteria are useful in the interpretation of the right to health and can answer which innovative health care technologies for children ought to be made financially accessible.

The paper analyses and compares the available legal frameworks that protect the autonomy and ensure decision-making rights in physical and mental healthcare for persons with mental disabilities in three Baltic countries - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The decision-making rights of persons with mental and psychosocial disabilities are examined in depth, with respect to the principles outlined in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The research shows that none of the three Baltic States provide an adequate framework to enable every person with mental health difficulties the ability to exercise autonomous decision-making in healthcare and receive support when needed. There is an urgent need to reform healthcare legislation in all Baltic countries to ensure a paradigm shift towards a human rights-based approach that limits substituted decision-making and enables supported decision-making in healthcare.

Significant amendments to the Belgian Act on Euthanasia were passed in March 2024. The amendments altered the registration form which physicians submit for oversight after the patient has died, the penalties for non-compliance with the law, and the potential liability of practitioners who provide an independent advice in a euthanasia assessment. Two of these amendments addressed judgements delivered by the Belgian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights. These amendments may have several positive impacts on euthanasia practice, including enhancing practitioners' compliance with the legal requirements and improving legal certainty. But they may also have negative impacts on practice, including by decreasing practitioners' willingness to provide euthanasia. Both the intended and possible unintended effects of reforms to Belgium's euthanasia law should be considered before and after their enactment. This is particularly important when these reforms change provisions which were seen as important when the original law was passed.

The present paper explores legal issues concerning connected objects used for health or health-related purposes and their corresponding usage of health and health-related data. It focuses on a patient/healthcare-user-centred perspective and researches the EU legal framework for health data and health-related data. Arguing that the legal framework, as recently complemented with the European Health Data Space (EHDS) Act, is plagued by complex intersections, between this recently enacted legislation and various other legal instruments, e.g. Medical Device Regulation (MDR), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Data Act, Data Governance Act, Artificial Intelligence Act, etc. Furthermore, the legal framework applicable to health and health-related connected objects also contains several grey zones (i.e. areas of legal uncertainty concerning interpretation and applicability of existing norms), and unintended blind spots (i.e. areas potentially left untouched by the existing frameworks). The paper focuses on data quality, acceptability of connected objects, availability and accessibility of data, as well as the overarching topic of privacy and data protection. Concluding that, examined in conjunction, existing regulatory safeguards and certification mechanisms do not offer sufficient protection and simultaneously result in an excessively complex, cumbersome and opaque regulatory framework that has underestimated the specific needs of users in the health and health-related sectors.