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France adopts domestic violence bill giving more power to doctors

The legislation allows doctors to break patient confidentiality if they believe a life is "in immediate danger".

La rédaction de Mediapart

This article is freely available.

France's parliament has voted to implement a bill intended to protect victims of domestic violence, reports the BBC.

The legislation allows doctors to break patient confidentiality if they believe a life is "in immediate danger".

The bill was approved last week by the National Assembly and was adopted unanimously by the Senate on Tuesday.

France has one of the highest rates of murders linked to domestic violence in Western Europe. Last year, 149 women were killed as a result, reports say.

"In our democracy there must be fights that bring us together, and this is what I believe the National Assembly and the Senate demonstrated during the examination of this bill," the new minister for gender equality, Élisabeth Moreno, said after the vote.

Read more of this report from the BBC.