Egypt’s Senate approves ‘medical liability and patient protection’ Act

CAIRO – 23 December 2024: Egypt’s Senate approved on Monday the draft law on ‘medical liability and patient protection’ during the general session.

The Senate will be informing the House of Representatives of its conclusions, as the law was referred to it by the House of Representatives in accordance with the Constitution.

The draft law is based on the basic principles of protecting patients' rights by ensuring that they receive high-quality medical services, punishing negligence or dereliction that may harm their health or safety, and encouraging medical efficiency by setting clear standards that motivate medical practitioners to adhere to the highest levels of professionalism and accuracy in their work, which contributes to improving the quality of health services.

The draft law also aims to achieve justice and redress for patients affected by medical errors without prejudice to the rights of doctors who may fall victim to unfair accusations, by adopting accurate and neutral investigation mechanisms.

The draft law calls for adherence to ethical values ​​in medical practice, including respect for the dignity and human rights of patients, and providing a supportive environment for medical staff by protecting health practitioners from assault during their work and arbitrary prosecution, and ensuring the availability of insurance against occupational hazards, which encourages them to perform their work with confidence and safety.

The draft law was keen to bring closer and facilitate the means of submitting complaints regarding medical errors to the Supreme Committee, and was keen at the current stage to devote the optional nature of the right of the service recipient who was harmed or his relatives to resort directly to the judiciary or resort to the mechanism for submitting a complaint to the Supreme Committee, and did not consider submitting a complaint a prerequisite for resorting to the judiciary or prevent the complainant from taking the action he deems to achieve his interest until the system is completed and its results are determined after implementation.