Denial of medical treatment The intentional withholding of medical treatment from persons in places of detention or from persons injured by an act attributable to public officials will engage the protection from torture, inhuman and degrading treatment. The Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners set out the following principles: • detainees should have access to at least one qualified medical officer with some knowledge of psychiatry and to a qualified dental officer; • sick prisoners who require specialist treatment should be transferred to specialized institutions or civil hospitals; and • medical officers should daily see all sick prisoners, and any prisoner to whom their attention is specially directed, and should report to the director of the institution whenever they consider that a prisoner’s physical or mental health has been or will be harmed by continued imprisonment or by any condition of imprisonment. Appropriately qualified medical officers should regularly inspect and advise the director on the quantity and quality of food, the hygiene and cleanliness of the institution and the prisoners, and observance of the rules concerning physical education. Protection from torture and inhuman and degrading treatment will also be relevant to enforced treatment in psychiatric hospitals and also experimental treatments. The European Court found in one case that failure to treat adequately a heroin addict for her addiction in prison who subsequently died amounted to a violation of Article 3, ECHR.375 Similarly, failure to treat a prisoner with a history of mental illness who subsequently committed suicide also amounted to a violation of Article 3.376 OSCE participating States have committed themselves to “protect individuals from any psychiatric or other medical practices that violate human rights and fundamental freedoms and take effective measures to prevent and punish such practices.”377 375 “Having regard to the responsibility owed by prison authorities to provide the requisite medical care for detained persons, the Court finds that in the present case there was a failure to meet the standards imposed by Article 3 of the Convention. It notes in this context the failure of the prison authorities to provide accurate means of establishing Judith McGlinchey’s weight loss, which was a factor that should have alerted the prison to the seriousness of her condition, but was largely discounted due to the discrepancy of the scales. There was a gap in the monitoring of her condition by a doctor over the weekend when there was a further significant drop in weight and a failure of the prison to take more effective steps to treat Judith McGlinchey’s condition, such as her admission to hospital to ensure the intake of medication and fluids intravenously, or to obtain more expert assistance in controlling the vomiting”, ECtHR, McGlinchey and Others v. UK, Application no. 50390/99, 29 April 2003, para. 57. 376 “The lack of effective monitoring of Mark Keenan’s condition and the lack of informed psychiatric input into his assessment and treatment disclose significant defects in the medical care provided to a mentally ill person known to be a suicide risk. The belated imposition on him in those circumstances of a serious disciplinary punishment - seven days’ segregation in the punishment block and an additional twenty-eight days to his sentence imposed two weeks after the event and only nine days before his expected date of release - which may well have threatened his physical and moral resistance, is not compatible with the standard of treatment required in respect of a mentally ill person”, ECtHR, Keenan v. UK, Application no. 27229/95, 3 April 2001, para. 116. 377 Op. cit., note 29, 1989 Vienna Document, Questions Relating to Security in Europe, Principles para. 23.6. Countering Terrorism, Protecting Human Rights 133