The exercise of public health powers in cases of infectious disease: human rights implications. Enhorn v. Sweden.

Introduction While there has been considerable scrutiny by both domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) of issues of contested medical treatment, little judicial attention has addressed the exercise of public health powers. Indeed, the role of law in public health has been much neglected at both judicial and academic level. This is on one level surprising, given the vulnerability of many statutory public health powers to challenge on human rights grounds. It is, however, perhaps less surprising when it is remembered that historically public health powers have been exercised over the most impoverished sectors of communities: the homeless, ethnic minority populations and the poor. In Enhorn v. Sweden the ECHR recognised that ‘the Court has only to a very limited extent decided cases where a person has been detained for the prevention of spreading infectious diseases’. Most European states have statutory powers enabling a range of compulsory interventions, from compulsory vaccination to the compulsory medical examination, compulsory quarantine and compulsory isolation or detention of infected persons. The Court took the opportunity to determine in this case criteria for determining whether public health powers in cases of infectious disease complied with Convention rights. Such criteria will be of importance to the interpretation of public health powers in the United Kingdom, given that the Public Health Act 1984 and its equivalents in Northern Ireland and Scotland contain detention powers similar