The Covid-19 pandemic and the challenges facing the civil liability of health professionals
Subject and scope: A reflection is made on the challenges that the pandemic has generated in the area of medical civil liability. Based on the regulations, the possible scenarios in which health professionals or health facilities would incur in a case of civil liability within this context of covid-19 are determined.
Characteristics: In the case of new diseases, the principles of fault liability will prevent medical providers from being condemned for facts or circumstances that could not have been foreseen or avoided according to the state of knowledge of science. In addition, with regard to the public health problem, any judgment of liability should take into account the changes that will occur in the medical lex artis and differentiate the eventual liability of health care providers from that of the authority in charge of controlling the effects of the pandemic.
Findings: As everything new is unknown, covid-19 was and will be a learning process in all fields.
Conclusions: The health emergency caused by the coronavirus shows that the responsibility regimes must be able to differentiate the conceptual instruments available to deal with a new disease that, in addition, became a pandemic.
Copyright (c) 2022 DIXI
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Every single author of the articles has to declare that is an original unpublished work exclusively created by them, that it has not been submitted for simultaneous evaluation by another publication and that there is no impediment of any kind for concession of the rights provided for in the contract.
In this sense, the authors committed to await the result of the evaluation by the journal DIXI before considering its submission to another medium; in case the response by that publication is positive, additionally, the authors committed to respond for any action involving claims, plagiarism or any other kind of claim that could be made by third parties.
At the same time, the authors have to declare that they are completely in agreement with the conditions presented in their work and that they cede all patrimonial rights. These rights involve reproduction, public communication, distribution, dissemination, transformation, making it available and all forms of exploitation of the work using any medium or procedure, during the term of the legal protection of the work and in every country in the world, to the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia Press.
