Recommendations

Informed Consent involving minors has often raised questions among healthcare professionals, as well as between young people and their parents. The subject was recently under social debate in Portugal, at the time of the initiative of voluntary vaccination of minors. In this context, the National Council of Ethics for the Life Sciences (CNECV) considered it pertinent to reflect on the issue of consent concerning minors (children and young people) for health interventions or biomedical research purposes.

Given the predictability of future health emergencies, the CNECV has decided, on its own initiative, to reflect on the state of health preparedness in public health emergencies, considering that the response of a health system that claims to be ethically fair, caring, responsible and resilient, has to adopt measures that prevent the damages identified during future global health crisis situations, in order to promote universal and equitable access of citizens to health care.