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Ethical Dimensions of Public Health Actions and Policies With Special Focus on COVID-19

During pandemics, the ethicists, public health professionals, and human rights advocates raise a red flag about different public health actions that should, at best, be addressed through integrated, global policies. How to rationalize the healthcare resources and prioritize the cases is not a recent...

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Autores principales: Saleh, Basma M., Aly, Eman Mohamed, Hafiz, Marwa, Abdel Gawad, Rana M., El Kheir-Mataria, Wafa Abu, Salama, Mohamed
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8365183/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34409003
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.649918
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author Saleh, Basma M.
Aly, Eman Mohamed
Hafiz, Marwa
Abdel Gawad, Rana M.
El Kheir-Mataria, Wafa Abu
Salama, Mohamed
author_facet Saleh, Basma M.
Aly, Eman Mohamed
Hafiz, Marwa
Abdel Gawad, Rana M.
El Kheir-Mataria, Wafa Abu
Salama, Mohamed
author_sort Saleh, Basma M.
collection PubMed
description During pandemics, the ethicists, public health professionals, and human rights advocates raise a red flag about different public health actions that should, at best, be addressed through integrated, global policies. How to rationalize the healthcare resources and prioritize the cases is not a recent challenge but the serious concern about that is how to achieve this while not increasing the vulnerability of the disadvantaged population. Healthcare professionals use different scoring systems as a part of their decision-making so the medical teams and triage committees can allocate resources for predictable health outcomes and prognosis as well as to appropriately triage the patients accordingly. However, the value of the existing scoring systems to manage COVID-19 cases is not well-established yet. Part of this problem includes managing non-COVID patients with chronic medical conditions like non-communicable diseases and addressing their medical needs during the pandemic complex context in a way to avoid worsening their conditions and, on the other hand, avoid hindering the establishment of comprehensive standards for dealing with COVID-19. In this article, we discuss this dilemma as well as how preexisting ethical standards were challenged by COVID-19. We also discuss how monitoring the consistent application of ethical standards during the medical trials of new medications, vaccines, or unproven medical interventions is also a critical issue.
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spelling pubmed-83651832021-08-17 Ethical Dimensions of Public Health Actions and Policies With Special Focus on COVID-19 Saleh, Basma M. Aly, Eman Mohamed Hafiz, Marwa Abdel Gawad, Rana M. El Kheir-Mataria, Wafa Abu Salama, Mohamed Front Public Health Public Health During pandemics, the ethicists, public health professionals, and human rights advocates raise a red flag about different public health actions that should, at best, be addressed through integrated, global policies. How to rationalize the healthcare resources and prioritize the cases is not a recent challenge but the serious concern about that is how to achieve this while not increasing the vulnerability of the disadvantaged population. Healthcare professionals use different scoring systems as a part of their decision-making so the medical teams and triage committees can allocate resources for predictable health outcomes and prognosis as well as to appropriately triage the patients accordingly. However, the value of the existing scoring systems to manage COVID-19 cases is not well-established yet. Part of this problem includes managing non-COVID patients with chronic medical conditions like non-communicable diseases and addressing their medical needs during the pandemic complex context in a way to avoid worsening their conditions and, on the other hand, avoid hindering the establishment of comprehensive standards for dealing with COVID-19. In this article, we discuss this dilemma as well as how preexisting ethical standards were challenged by COVID-19. We also discuss how monitoring the consistent application of ethical standards during the medical trials of new medications, vaccines, or unproven medical interventions is also a critical issue. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-08-02 /pmc/articles/PMC8365183/ /pubmed/34409003 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.649918 Text en Copyright © 2021 Saleh, Aly, Hafiz, Abdel Gawad, El Kheir-Mataria and Salama. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Public Health
Saleh, Basma M.
Aly, Eman Mohamed
Hafiz, Marwa
Abdel Gawad, Rana M.
El Kheir-Mataria, Wafa Abu
Salama, Mohamed
Ethical Dimensions of Public Health Actions and Policies With Special Focus on COVID-19
title Ethical Dimensions of Public Health Actions and Policies With Special Focus on COVID-19
title_full Ethical Dimensions of Public Health Actions and Policies With Special Focus on COVID-19
title_fullStr Ethical Dimensions of Public Health Actions and Policies With Special Focus on COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed Ethical Dimensions of Public Health Actions and Policies With Special Focus on COVID-19
title_short Ethical Dimensions of Public Health Actions and Policies With Special Focus on COVID-19
title_sort ethical dimensions of public health actions and policies with special focus on covid-19
topic Public Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8365183/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34409003
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.649918
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