Human Rights

The Human Rights Act's Article 2 states that "everyone's right to life shall be protected by
law," so to refuse to hold doctors accountable for their negligence is to declare that you
disagree with the fundamental principles of the law. This includes the state's responsibility to
take appropriate action to protect life. Since hospitals and healthcare trusts are
government-controlled organizations, they have a responsibility to defend a person's right to
life. The case of Mrs. De Sousa's husband, who underwent surgery to remove nasal polyps,
provides a clear illustration of this. He later developed bacterial meningitis, which wasn't
discovered for two days after he was released from the hospital. He sadly passed away
three months after the operation, following several re-admissions to the hospital while
experiencing severe abdominal pain and diarrhea. Although the negligent failure in this case
was not necessarily causal (and no medical negligence was therefore found), this case is
significant for those who specialize in medical negligence because it has called into question
Rabone's long-standing authority (which is effectively accepting a disparity between
mental and physical health, making the line where the operational duty under Article 2
now falls a mental v. physical health line). In essence, it might no longer be necessary to
show more than just a hospital's failure to provide the patient with the level of care required
by the common law duty of care in order to establish a breach of the Article 2 positive duty to
protect life.