Groningen Centre for Health Law

Recently, three institutions in Rotterdam jointly wrote a letter to the city’s mayor to ask the municipality to adopt a smoking ban for the streets that connect their premises via municipal regulation. The parties – the city’s main university hospital, university of applied sciences, and one of the city’s secondary schools – are all located next to or near to each other. In order to protect their students, staff, patients, and visitors, they want to create a smoke-free zone in and immediately around their premises. While the institutions can adopt smoke-free policies on their own premises, they prefer a fully smoke-free zone because they do not want to send smokers who violate their internal smoking policies to neighbouring institutions who likewise try to enforce their own smoking ban.

The movement to delink the cost of developing medicines from their market price received another boost this week, with the publication of a new report from the Netherlands Council for Public Health and Society, an official government advisory body.

Irregular migrants face obstacles when trying to obtain health care. In order to enjoy the right to health, it is necessary to create a central reporting point to monitor actual obstacles in the access of health care of irregular migrants.

In this interview, Henriette Roscam Abbing tells us about her past career and reflects on the future of health law. This interview is the first publication from the series ‘Voices in the field,’ a joint endeavour by GHLG and IFHHRO.

At the time of writing there is a remarkable case pending in the Netherlands concerning the effects of air pollution on the health of the population. Two foundations and 57 individual plaintiffs have launched a case against the Dutch State in which they ask the court to order the State to reduce air pollution below the European maxima to the norms set in the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on air quality. If the case is successful, this will have significant consequences for the government as it will be ordered to protect the health of its citizens in a more effective manner by improving air quality. What are the chances of the plaintiffs succeeding in winning the case?

On 14 September 2016, the Court in The Hague ruled that the possibility to smoke in designated smoking areas in publicly accessible places is in line with Article 8(2) of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (hereafter: FCTC). This provision states that State Parties to the FCTC shall adopt, as determined by national law, and actively promote ‘measures, providing for protection from exposure to tobacco smoke in indoor workplaces, public transport, indoor public places and, as appropriate, other public places’. According to the Court, Article 8(2) of the FCTC lacks ‘direct effect’ in the Dutch legal order in the sense of Article 94 of the Dutch Constitution. This, contrary to the ruling of the Dutch Supreme Court (Hoge Raad) on 14 October 2014, where Article 8(2) FCTC was declared to have ‘direct effect’.

The report titled “Quickscan Gezondheidszorg asielzoekerskinderen in Nederland” was commissioned and published by the UNICEF-led Working Group on Children in Asylum Seeker Centres (Werkgroep Kind in azc).

An investigation into the effects of tobacco control laws by a group of medical researchers sends an important message to law and policy makers. The study reveals that tighter tobacco control laws and policies, especially those introducing an extension of the smoke-free law to the hospitality industry, in combination with a tax increase and a public campaign, leads to less babies being born with low birth weight.

Op 28 april 2016 zal Gerrit-Jan Pulles, advocaat bij Van der Woude de Graaf een lezing houden over de doorwerking van sociaal-economische mensenrechten in de nationale rechtspraktijk.