Enjoyment of the right to health comprises the provision of medical services, including preventive and diagnostic services, and this presupposes a voluntary informed consent to medical intervention. Thus, immunoprophylaxis is one of the types of medical services. However, unlike other types of medical services, in some cases immunoprophylaxis is mandatory, with restrictions applicable to persons who groundlessly refuse to be vaccinated. It should be noted that in Ukraine the issue of immunoprophylaxis is a rather complex one and insufficiently resolved. As a result of a low level of immunization and failure to comply with the European Vaccine Action Plan 2015–2020 adopted by the World Health Organization, epidemics of particularly dangerous infectious diseases have broken out in our country.

This article aims at identifying restrictions in case of mandatory vaccination and methods to be used in the event other human rights are violated.

The methodology of this research rests upon an organic combination of general scientific and special legal research methods, which include, in particular: principles of objectivity, some techniques of the logical method, system and structural functional methods, and the method of legal modeling. Particularly for the use of system analysis, we apply the systematic method of current legislation regulating court proceedings in cases related to patients’ rights protection. The structural functional method allows identifying the main components of judicial reasoning of a respective category, and the method of legal modeling allows outlining proposals concerning how to improve current legislation and court practice in cases related to patients’ rights protection.

Upon studying a small segment of the provision of the right to health, in particular, concerning immunoprophylaxis, the author is able to conclude that currently in Ukraine there are no levers for pre-emptive consolidation of fundamental human rights and freedoms. Despite many conceptual and policy documents, most of them are either ignored for political reasons or are not updated after completion dates. Currently, there is virtually no appropriate uniform concept of public policy to ensure fundamental rights and freedoms, including in the healthcare area, and yet the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health is a fundamental natural and inalienable human right.

For its efficient functioning, the health sector should draw upon the coordinated functioning of the mechanisms which are responsible for practical implementation of social guarantees, particularly, the right to health.

Given that some social guarantees are not always properly performed by institutions of healthcare which, via their practice, embody the State’s social duty to ensure the right of citizens to healthcare, including immunoprophylaxis, a conclusion can be made that there is a strong reason for the State to create the conditions for immunoprophylaxis of the population by regulating relations in the healthcare area and by defining the conceptual bases of operation of healthcare institutions.

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Thesis

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