The right to regain health! Reject the verdict from Borgarting Court of Appeal!

Hanna Vesterager had MS. She had tried every available treatment in Norway, but nothing had any effect on her aggressive variant of the disease. She took the responisiblity for her own health, was referred by the Neurological Department at the University Hospital in Oslo to the University Hospital in Stockholm for a stem cell transplantation. Initially, this was a treatment she had to pay herself.

 

Even though Hanna Vesterager acts according to the Norwegian Government’s wish to get people back into the workforce and avoid the cost of paying disability pensions, they refuse to pay her expenses of 700.000 SEK (Swedish Kroner). Hanna Vesterager is today 100 percent back in work. Prior to the stem cell transplantation she was 100 percent on sick leave and on her way into a disability pension.

 

One year ago, Hanna Vesterager won a devastating victory in Oslo District Court (tingrett), but the Government’s attorney appealed, and on Tuesday, December 16, Borgarting Court of Appeal (lagmannsrett) showed that bureaucrats’ ideas of treatment options are more valued than the best neurologists and hematologists in Europe.

 

Hanna Vesterager says:

"- The Court’s message to the population is, that you should not take too much responsibility for your own health because you challenge the institutional power. In that case, you risk spending years in the judicial system. I am, in fact, being punished for having fought to regain health, to stay in the workforce, to challenge the knowledge of the health care system and for fighting the health bureaucracy.

 

This verdict weakens ordinary people’s view of legal protection!

 

With this petition we want to send a message to the Minister of Health, Bent Høie, and Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, Robert Erikson:

 

Reject the verdict from Borgarting Court of Appeal (lagmannsrett) - Maintain the verdict from Oslo District Court !"