Disabled and old people must not be disadvantaged when allocating scarce hospital intensive care beds in the event of a pandemic. On Thursday evening, the Bundestag passed an amendment to the Infection Protection Act, which formulates rules for so-called triage in such emergency situations. People with disabilities fought for this before the Federal Constitutional Court because they feared being discriminated against in the distribution of scarce medical resources during the corona pandemic.
The law stipulates that in cases of shortage due to a communicable disease, the allocation of medical resources, for example in a hospital, may only be made on the basis of “the current and short-term probability of survival”. Discrimination because of disability, age, gender or origin is expressly prohibited by law. A so-called ex-post triage, in which the treatment of one patient would be discontinued in favor of another, is also ruled out.
The Health Committee had made more specifics to the law this week and added an evaluation regulation. Disabled associations and medical representatives had criticized the draft law. Some fear that the regulation is not sufficient to protect disabled people from disadvantages. Others fear legal uncertainty and consider parts of the regulation to be hardly practicable. Among other things, it stipulates that in certain case constellations up to three doctors must be consulted for the allocation decision.
Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD), on the other hand, defended his law. More pandemics and infectious diseases are to be expected, he said. So you have to be better prepared. “But in principle it must be clear that people with disabilities or older people are not disadvantaged even in times of scarce capacities.” Politicians from several parties expressed the hope in the Bundestag that this law would never have to be applied.
The Union complained that the regulation should only apply to pandemics and not to natural disasters, war or terrorist attacks. The AfD spoke of an encroachment on the part of the state. The law is an expression of a deep mistrust of doctors, who should be deprived of the opportunity to make decisions for the benefit of the patients with bureaucratic rules.
Due to an initially ambiguous voting result, the deputies had to go to the polls in a roll-call vote.
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