School of Law, Queen's University Belfast, BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, UK.
Med Law Rev. 2023 Feb 27;31(1):25-46. doi: 10.1093/medlaw/fwac023.
This article discusses the human rights of residents in care homes in England who were affected by restrictions that were imposed during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to safeguard health and life at a time of public health emergency. It focuses on the potentially adversarial relationship between the need to protect the health of these residents and the possible adverse interferences with their human rights in the initial phase of the pandemic. The scope and application of these rights to the healthcare context is not straightforward due to the exigencies of the pandemic. Consideration is given to whether their rights, as protected by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) are vindicated or breached by the actions taken in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The article questions whether the restrictions that were applied were justified, given the limitations that exist within some ECHR Articles. It deliberates upon what can be done to ensure that relevant bodies and care homes, themselves, are better enabled to respond to a public health emergency in an individualistic, rights-based manner, based upon both principlism and pragmatism.
本文讨论了英格兰养老院居民的人权问题，这些居民受到了 COVID-19 大流行最初几个月实施的限制措施的影响，这些措施是为了在公共卫生紧急情况下保护健康和生命。本文重点关注在大流行的初始阶段，保护这些居民健康的必要性与可能对其人权产生的不利干扰之间潜在的对抗关系。由于大流行的紧迫性，这些权利在医疗保健背景下的范围和适用性并不简单。考虑的问题是，根据《欧洲人权公约》（ECHR）和《联合国残疾人权利公约》（CRPD）的规定，为保护这些权利而采取的行动是否侵犯或违反了这些权利。本文质疑所采取的限制措施是否合理，考虑到 ECHR 某些条款存在的局限性。本文还审议了如何确保相关机构和养老院本身能够更好地以个人主义和基于权利的方式应对公共卫生紧急情况，这需要基于原则主义和实用主义。
