On the Right to Health Protection of Socially Vulnerable Groups of the Population

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to characterize the most significant aspects of the exercise of rights in the field of health protection by persons belonging to socially vulnerable groups of the population. As a result of the study, it was found that vulnerability as a socio-legal phenomenon is a state in which a person, family, group of persons cannot meet their basic and social needs due to the presence of a circumstance/totality of circumstances that prevent this. The author’s definition of socially vulnerable groups of the population has been proposed. A distinction was made between socially vulnerable groups of the population and poor persons. It is justified that children are the most numerous socially vulnerable group of the population. The reasons for this conclusion are the social vulnerability and potential insecurity of children due to their age, insufficient life experience, psychological and mental unevenness and objective unwillingness to many life realities. The dependence of the child’s well-being on the effectiveness of the implementation of his right to health care has been established. The right to protect the health of every child in Ukraine can be ensured only with guaranteed access to qualified doctors and to vital medicines with proven effectiveness. Moreover, such access should be timely, provided at the time of the child’s need for medical care. Important directions of state policy in the field of child health protection have been established. Among them: the development of an effective mechanism for the preventive detection, monitoring and protection of children, regarding whom there are the first signs of a negative situation; monitoring and coordination of the process of informing parents and children about child health and «family hygiene»; To promote and encourage the proper passage of regular preventive medical examinations by those categories of children for whom their legislation provides for them as mandatory; legal, scientific and industrial development of the pharmaceutical sphere in order to maximize the provision of the state’s domestic market with high-quality medicines. It is proposed to carry out a periodic revision of the Vaccination Calendar, the inclusion in it of «managed» infections that are not considered by the current legislation and the introduction of a system for encouraging vaccination. To protect the interests of the child, the need to introduce special electronic resources (an appropriate platform) with the necessary information for children and the possibility of feedback is justified. To develop such a resource, one should use world experience.