Alexandria Administrative Court has given health minister and head of health insurance department a three-hour period to clarify reasons behind abstention from implementing a verdict ordering treatment of a child at the department’s expense.
The representative for Health Minister Adel al-Adawy said that “the minister is entitled to treat the child as the health insurance department is an independent legal entity.” No one represented the health insurance department.
The court canceled the department's chief decision refraining from implementing the verdict issued in December 2014 and ordered the minister, as the department is under his legal supervision, to provide the child with the medicine forever or until he recovers.
The court considered the abstention from implementing verdicts as endangering for the child’s life as well as being a constitutional violation.
The child, Walid Mohamed Gheith, suffers from a rare genetic disease that requires treatment for life. It causes liver and spleen enlargement as well as scoliosis, loss of hearing, impaired vision and inability to move, among other disorders.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
