The issue of apology and disclosure of medical errors in the context of the physician- patient relationship has attracted increasing attention in recent years. On the other hand, it has received little attention in the context of public health activities, thus missing the collective healing potential of apologizing and providing information to the public.
The purpose of this paper is to enrich the discussion regarding apologies and disclosure errors in the context of public health. To fulfil this purpose, the paper addresses the ringworm case, which is a well- known episode in the history of Israeli public health policy. More specifically, the paper focuses on a decision handed by the Israeli Supreme Court in the Eibi Case (2015), which recognized a duty to inform ringworm patients about the medical error involved in their treatment and its results. The paper seeks to examine whether this decision succeeded where other legal means failed, in the construction of a collective healing process. The paper concludes that although the Eibi Case provided the court an opportunity to contribute to the creation of a collective healing process of ringworms patients, the decision didn’t fully realize this potential.

Recent decades have witnessed the appearance of multiple grounds for vaccine hesitancy. One of the options to deal with this phenomenon is legislative. Given that vaccination enforcement through law raises allegations of infringement of constitutional rights, interventions seeking to promote vaccination compliance should rather address the factors that influence vaccine hesitancy, which are – by and large – related to trust in health authorities. Trust in health authorities may be promoted by a procedure for compensating the comparatively few vaccination victims reflecting a willingness to acknowledge liability and commitment to social justice.
A qualitative study of the Israeli Vaccination Victim Insurance Law was conducted by the author. The study involved document content analysis (legislative protocols, Court judgments) and semi-structured in-depth interviews with informants representing different legal, medical and ethical perspectives. The thematic analysis found that the Israeli Vaccination Victim Insurance Law and its implementation in Court do not attain their therapeutic potential with respect to the promotion of trust. Barriers to claim submissions and the denial of all claims submitted according to the law do not permit the acknowledgement of liability or the demonstration of the authorities’ commitment to social justice.
Recognizing the therapeutic power of the Law may lead to adaptations or amendments promoting trust in the health authorities and subsequently fostering vaccine compliance.