Legal Status of a Minor in Giving Consent to Treatment from the Perspective of the Malaysian Child Act 2001

Abstract

Patient's autonomy to make his own decision is an ethical principle that has been interpreted into the legal concept of consent. Consent to medical treatment is a very fundamental aspect in medical law as it can be regarded as an acknowledgment that a patient has the right to make his own decision on what he wants to be done to his body. In the area of consent, capacity of the patient to make decision plays an important role. Capacity from the context of a patient's age is one of the factors that needs to be considered in deciding whether that particular patient has capacity to give consent or not. In this paper the focus will be on whether children governed by the Malaysian Child Act 2001 have the right to give consent to their medical treatment. In discussing this issue, the writers will look into the general legal position of children to give consent in Malaysia before going into the specific legal provisions pertaining to consent to medical treatment for children governed by the jurisdiction of the Child Act

Impact of VUCA world on children’s emotional development during online learning

“…On the other hand, Section 2 (1) The Guardianship of the Infant Act 1961 defines 'child' or 'infant' as a person who has not attained majority. Besides, Subsection 2 (a): i) further explains that for this act, every person professing the religion of Islam shall be deemed to have attained his majority when he shall have completed his age of eighteen (18) years and not before; ii) every other person shall be deemed to have attained his majority when he shall have completed his age of 21 years not before [16].…”

Recommendations for removing access barriers to effective Sexual/Reproductive Health Services (SRHS) for young people in South East Nigeria: A systematic review

“…Some studies also indicated that healthcare providers believe that parental consent needs to be sought before providing SRH services to young people [96], this will increase the risk of young people utilization of unsafe and illegal healthcare services in cases of abortion [97]. Although, Zainudin, et al [98] opined that young people below the age of 18 years are considered minors and have no capacity to provide consent, thus requiring parental consent before healthcare services are delivered to them. Also, some respondents stated that they don't access SRHS because some of the healthcare providers are older than them [81,82] and they feel uncomfortable speaking to a much older practitioner [36,73,99].…”