Diana Cárdenas is medical doctor with a master degree in science and nutrition from the Université de Paris Diderot, a master degree in Political Science and International Relations from Université de Lyon and a PhD in philosophy from Université Franche-Comté, France. She has been working on bioethics and human rights for the last decade. The focus of her research is on the link between ethics and clinical nutrition. She is the coordinator of the International Working group for patients´ right to nutritional care. She is also member and a collaborator of the ACNC, the Francophone Society on Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (SFNCM) and ESPEN.
Remote speaker / Presenting virtually
Nutritional care has been raised to the level of a human right in a close relationship to two well recognized fundamental rights: the right to food and the right to health. This means that all people should have access to food and evidence-based medical nutrition therapy including artificial nutrition and hydration. In this regard, the hospitalized malnourished ill should mandatorily have access to screening, diagnosis, nutritional assessment, with optimal and timely nutritional therapy in order to overcome malnutrition associated morbidity and mortality, while reducing the rates of disease-related malnutrition. The aim of this lecture is to analyze how the application of the human rights-based approach to the field of clinical nutrition will contribute to the construction of a moral, political and legal focus to the concept of nutritional care. We will show how this approach could contribute to bridge the gap between health care professionals and policymakers, and could be considered as the cornerstone to the rationale of political and legal instruments in the field of clinical nutrition.