Right to health

The Italian Health Impact Assessment (VIS) is a multidisciplinary participatory technique intended to assist public decision-makers in understanding the potential effects of policies, plans, programmes, and initiatives on community health. In recent years, in the Italian legal system, the instrument has found repeated applications, with different terminological variations, in the regional sphere and at an administrative level. At the national regulatory level, the VIS has found recognition in a series of recent amendments to the Consolidated Environmental Protection Act, specifically in environmental impact assessment procedures, through a configuration that appears to be far from the international model of Health Impact Assessment (HIA). The amendments require the private sector to do research on the specific health implications, while ensuring that the health component of the environmental impact assessment is carried out within a procedural framework established by the relevant public administration.

This article compares the digitalization process of healthcare in Italy and Germany focusing on two main tools: the electronic health record and the mHealth regulation. Despite structural differences, the two countries present similar levels of digitization and, whereas Germany has recently introduced cutting-edge legislation on digital care, Italy has a more advanced level of EHR implementation. The analysis therefore focuses on the issues that have emerged in the two jurisdictions and the complementarity of the solutions adopted.

The paper analyses the relationship between public and private actors in the context of the Italian National Health Service. This relationship not only characterizes and conditions the structure and organisation of the NHS, but also affects the right to health of citizens-users.

In a recent judgement, the administrative court of Lazio has annulled the circular of the Ministry of Health concerning the domestic management of Covid-19 patients. It has in fact argued that the binding nature of the circular undermines the possibility of the physicians to freely select the most suitable therapy for the patient. The Council of State has a different opinion and, reforming the judgment of the TAR, has also ruled on the complex issue related to the relationship between the standardization of care and autonomy of the physicians. This contribution offers an overview on the rulings of the administrative courts on this topic and then focuses on a short analysis of the second instance judgment.

The essay singles out the problematic profiles of the decision by which the Consiglio di Giustizia amministrativa per la Regione siciliana ordered a preliminary investigation, before evaluating the existence of the non-manifest unfoundedness of the question of constitutional legitimacy raised by the appellant relating the Covid-19 vaccine mandates.

The article outlines the exemptions made by d. 18/2020 (Measures to strengthen the National Health Service and economic support for families, workers and businesses related to the epidemiological emergency by COVID-19) to the legal architecture of the responsibilities of principal actors behind clinical trials of drugs for compassionate use in the wake of the establishment of a Unique National Ethics Committee and the devising of new expertise in charge of AIFA. While waiting for the vaccine, the compassionate use of drugs, as we will see, is at present almost the only viable path of health activities around the world against SARS-Cov-2 which can be credited with creating an unprecedented 'scientific relevance' by the world scientific community.

This paper analyzes the decree n. 634/2020, with which the President of the First Chamber of the Lombardy Regional Administrative Court provisionally suspended the part of the Lombardy regional Ordinance n. 528 in the part in which it authorizes retail trade operators to home delivery any kind of goods, because of its prejudicial effects to workers health.

The President of the Third Section of the Council of State - by means of the decree no. 2028 of April 17th, 2020 - declared the inadmissibility of the precautionary appeal filed against decree no. 122/2020, according to which the President of the First Section of the Regional Administrative Court of Sardinia did not grant the suspension of the effects of two urgent ordinances issued by the Mayor of Pula (Cagliari) and which impose additional restrictions on the fundamental freedoms of individuals, going beyond those provided for at the national and regional level.