Doctors from Ecuador take a COIP complaint to Geneva

A delegation from the Medical Association of Pichincha (CMP) traveled to Geneva two weeks ago to ask the UN to manage a reform of the Comprehensive Criminal Organic Code (COIP) that sanctions professional malpractice.

The modification would be for professional responsibility in the medical field to be approached from an administrative and even civil indemnity perspective, but not through criminal law.

We do not disagree that the negligent acts of doctors are judged, but not in a Comprehensive Criminal Organic Code. This has to pass through mediation or arbitration or the Civil Code so that there is another type of spaces in which bad medical practice is judged, but criminalizing medicine is what we categorically reject,” said Santiago Carrasco, president of the CMP.

Carrasco said that the proposal was supported by most countries in the UN forum and that doctors will not rest until this legal provision is repealed.

The petition was made after submitting a report on the situation of Ecuadorian doctors after the approval of the COIP in 2014. This rule establishes up to 16 years of deprivation of liberty for alleged medical malpractice.