Recognizing the patient as an actor in his health, improving relations between doctors and patients… these are some of the main lines of the law voted – almost unanimously – on March 4, 2002.
The history of the Kouchner law, named after the Minister of Health at the time, is the result of a triple movement, as described by its director of cabinet at the time, Didier Tabuteau. Public health is, for him, obvious, and “very short” health is a major subject, on a professional but also personal level, confides the one who was appointed vice-president of the Council of State in early 2022. delivered The Tales of Segur (Ophrys editions, 2006), he recounts the hospitalization of his son at birth, “the small hospital box where his survival had been at stake for several weeks”. Days that changed his life.
Unpublished by its genesis, which began in 1989, this founding text first drew its sources from the movement to humanize hospitals, which began in 1944-1945, with the first circulars. The leitmotiv is then to replace the common rooms of 30, 40, 60 beds by rooms of six beds maximum. Other circulars encourage “Knock before entering the patient’s room, do not use familiar terms with the patient”. This led to the hospitalized patient’s charter, proposed by Simone Veil, then Minister of Health, in 1974, which is now displayed in hospital rooms.
Second movement, the case law of the Council of State and the Court of Cassation between 1988 and 2000, in particular on the compensation for the therapeutic hazard. “This exceptional jurisprudential decade is also part of the AIDS years”, recalls Didier Tabuteau. The law of the sick will also aim to restore public confidence in the health system, shaken by the contaminated blood affair.
Third movement, that of associations. If it is very old in France, with the League against cancer, born in March 1918, or the French Association of diabetics, created on March 25, 1938, which became the French Federation of diabetics, etc. “it is the strong mobilization of associations such as Aides, Act Up, with patients and families who speak out, which will profoundly transform public action”, analyzes Didier Tabuteau. The basic principle “nothing for us without us!” », promoted by the Denver Charter in 1983, written by American gays suffering from AIDS in the midst of an epidemic, became the leitmotif of the action. At the same time, the AFM Téléthon, created in 1958, invented the rare disease policy in France, then in Europe, by launching the first Téléthon in 1987, inspired by the American model.
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