The Supreme Court has confirmed that a civil servant from Granada has the right to receive sick leave for the time she could not work due to surgery to eliminate myopia in a private center, a benefit that was denied to her in two previous instances on the grounds that it was an intervention. esthetic".
The high court ruling has upheld the appeal to unify doctrine presented by the lawyer Antonio Folgoso against the ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA) that maintained the criteria of the Social Court 3 of Granada.
The events date back to April 2018 when a worker underwent surgery to correct her myopia and astigmatism in a private clinic, an intervention for which she requested a temporary disability at work, which the mutual insurance company denied, interpreting that it was an operation. aesthetics" that is not included in the portfolio of public health services. The worker provided a report endorsed by a doctor explaining that she suffered from dermatitis that prevented her from wearing glasses and that she also did not tolerate the use of contact lenses, data that justified the intervention.
The World Health Organization (WHO) considers that myopia is a disease and this worker went to court to claim her right to receive sick leave linked to the operation, which was denied by the Social Court 3 of Granada.
This worker's lawyer appealed the ruling before the TSJA, which rejected her allegations, and again filed an appeal, this time before the Supreme Court and to demand the unification of the doctrine since a ruling from the Social Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León (Valladolid) did consider the right to receive a leave for a similar myopia intervention. According to the Supreme Court ruling, the fact that the surgical treatment of myopia is not included in the portfolio of services of the national health system does not make it an aesthetic issue.
This ruling from the social sphere opens the way for other sick leave to be applied for surgical interventions in private clinics by separating the center or the fact that a treatment is or is not in the portfolio of public health services from whether it is aesthetic or to correct a pathology.
