The European Regional System 2 case whether the prisoner’s state of health is compatible with continued detention. In Mouisel v France,383 the applicant needed prolonged chemotherapy for his leukaemia, and a medical report had recommended that he be placed in a specialised unit, but the prison authorities had merely transferred him to a prison closer to a hospital. Only one year after this transfer was the applicant granted conditional release based on his need for regular hospitalisation. The Court therefore examined the period between the report recommending transfer to a specialised unit and the conditional release, considering whether the continued detention of the applicant gave rise to “a situation which attained a sufficient level of severity to fall within the scope of Article 3 of the Convention,”384 taking into account “factors show[ing] that the applicant’s illness was progressing and that the prison was scarcely equipped to deal with it, yet no special measures were taken by the prison authorities.”385 The Court thus found that the national authorities did not take sufficient care of the applicant’s health to ensure that he did not suffer treatment contrary to Article 3 of the Convention, concluding that his continued detention under these circumstances “undermined his dignity and entailed particularly acute hardship that caused suffering beyond that inevitably associated with a prison sentence and treatment for cancer.”386 While the Court did not establish a general obligation to release a detainee for health reasons, it approved conditional release of individuals suffering from incurable diseases which necessitate serious and regular treatment. Thus, the State is under an obligation to ensure that all detainees are held in conditions that respect their human dignity, that the conditions and manner of detention do not subject detainees to distress or hardship of an intensity exceeding the unavoidable level of suffering inherent in detention and that, given the practical demands of imprisonment, the health and well-being of prisoners are adequately secured by measures including provision of medical assistance.387 Mouisel v France, no. 67263/01, ECHR 2002-IX, judgement of 14 November 2002. Ibid, §45. 385 Ibid, §45. 386 Ibid, §48. See also, for example, Hüseyin Yıldırım v Turkey, no. 2778/02, judgement of 3 May 2007. 387 See Papon v France (no. 1), no. 64666/01, ECHR 2001-VI, judgement of 7 June 2001; Gelfmann v France, no. 25875/03, judgement of 14 December 2004. 383 384 80