Dr. Ahmad Mohamad Alomar
Assistant Professor of Criminal Law
Faculty of Law, Sohar University, Oman

Abstract:

This research discusses the criminal responsibility of refraining from providing medical assistance. It aims to deal with the nature of responsibility for this refraining and its conditions, by following the descriptive, analytical, and comparative methods.
The research concludes that there are two trends regarding the type of responsibility which results for refraining from providing medical assistance and refusing treatment, in addition to when it is considered a punishable crime. The first trend denies criminal responsibility, while the second recognizes penal responsibility and imposes punishment on the abstainer.
The research also concludes that refraining to provide medical assistance is not a criminal crime unless special conditions and elements exist. The conditions are represented by the presence of a patient in danger, and the possibility of providing assistance without danger. As for the elements, a material element represented by the forms of refraining to provide medical assistance, and a moral element that is embodied in the fact that the abstention is intentional.
The most important recommendation embodied in the research is the necessity of differentiating the legal ruling of refraining from providing medical assistance according to the condition in which the patient or injured person is and limiting the criminal responsibility for it to the situation in which the patient or injured is in danger that requires a necessary and urgent intervention. In other cases, refraining from treatment or refusing it is merely a professional violation that entails disciplinary medical liability.

Keywords: refusal of treatment, medical responsibility, the injured, the state of danger, disciplinary penalties.

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