This master's thesis deals with the right to medical treatment during the covid-19 epidemic. It focuses on the right to medical treatment as part of the broader internationally recognized right to health, which the Constitution of the World Health Organization defines as a fundamental human right. The Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia does not directly regulate the right to health. The right to health is however protected in the Slovenian legal system by the constitutional right to health care. The covid-19 epidemic has created a number of demanding challenges in relation to the aforementioned constitutional human right.
At the beginning of the assignment, I present the position of the right to health in international law and describe the Slovenian constitutional and legislative regulation of the right in question. In the central part of the assignment, I focus on the realization of the right to treatment during an epidemic within the network of public health service providers. At the same time, on the basis of available empirical data, I show how the adopted state measures in health care affected the implementation of individual health services and newly discovered diseases, comparing data from the period of the covid-19 epidemic with data from before the epidemic. I also deal with the question of the proportionality of the adopted measures and, consequently, with their constitutional (in)admissibility. In doing so, I focus in particular on the controversial measure of the temporary suspension of non-emergency health services from March 2020. In the last part of the assignment, I briefly present the ethical dilemmas that health workers had to face due to the overload of the health system. It is primarily a question of how to ensure adequate medical care for all patients as fairly as possible in the absence of medical staff and equipment. I will further comment on the problem of prolonged waiting times and the importance of state co-financing, as well as on the state's potential liability for damages due to the omission of the duty to protect people's health and life and to ensure the operation of compulsory health insurance.
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