Ethical And Legal Considerations In Mitigating Pandemic Disease

In recent public workshops and working group meetings, the Forum on Microbial Threats of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has examined a variety of infectious disease outbreaks with pandemic potential, including those caused by influenza (IOM, 2005) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) (IOM, 2004). Particular attention has been paid to the potential pandemic threat posed by the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which is now endemic in many Southeast Asian bird populations. Since 2003, the H5N1 subtype of avian influenza has caused 185 confirmed human deaths in 11 countries, including some cases of viral transmission from human to human (WHO, 2007). But as worrisome as these developments are, at least they are caused by known pathogens. The next pandemic could well be caused by the emergence of a microbe that is still unknown, much as happened in the 1980s with the emergence of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and in 2003 with the appearance of the SARS coronavirus. Previous Forum meetings on pandemic disease have discussed the scientific and logistical challenges associated with pandemic disease recognition, identification, and response. Participants in these earlier meetings also recognized the difficulty of implementing disease control strategies effectively. Ethical and Legal Considerations in Mitigating Pandemic Disease: Workshop Summary as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop.

This book examines the often tough questions raised by infectious diseases through essays that explore a host of legal and ethical issues. The authors also offer potential solutions in order to ensure that past errors are not repeated in response to future outbreaks. The essays touch on a number of key themes, including institutional competence, the accountability and responsibility of non-state actors, the importance of pharmaceuticals, and the move towards a rights-based approach in global health. Readers gain insights into such important questions as follows: How can we help victims in other countries? What (if any) responsibility should be placed upon international organizations whose actions exacerbate infectious diseases? How can we ensure that pharmaceutical research helps all communities, even those who cannot afford to pay for the products? While broadly covering global health law, the book adopts an inter-disciplinary approach that draws on public international law, philosophy, international relations, human rights law, and healthcare economics. As such, it is a valuable resource for academic libraries, appealing to scholars and postgraduates engaged in relevant research, as well as to those engaged with global health and policy at the international level.

This book addresses the many ethical issues and extraordinary risks that nurses and others are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic, which creates physical, emotional, and economic burdens, affecting nurses' overall health and well-being. Nurses are essential front-line clinicians across all health care settings and in every nation. The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel SARs-CoV-2 virus has affected children, adults, and communities within and across all societies. Nurses, too, have contracted the virus and died from the disease. They have also seen their colleagues, family members, and friends hospitalized or in intensive care units struggling to survive. Nursing’s professionalism and disciplinary resolve to care for patients and families amidst confusion, misinformation, and shifting guidelines has been called “heroic” by the public. How much risk should nurses be expected to accept during a pandemic? How do nurses help patients and families find comfort and dignity at the end-of-life? How do we help nurses who are suffering from moral distress and mental health concerns from what they have seen, been asked to do, or are unable to provide? And, how does society move forward from a pandemic that has challenged our basic ethical principles of justice and what is “fair, good and right” in caring for those who need care, including the most vulnerable and nurses themselves? This book addresses these and other ethical concerns that nurses are facing in their day-to-day clinical practice; experiences shared with patients, families, and colleagues. Although this book was written while the pandemic was still raging across the United States and globally, the events needed to be told as they were unfolding. This book helps us to learn from both the successes and failures that are affecting so many across the globe, including those on whom the public relies on to provide quality, compassionate, and expert care when they are sick: nurses.

The increasing emergence, re-emergence, and spread of deadly infectious diseases which pose health, economic, security and ethical challenges for states and people around the world, has given rise to an important global debate. The actual or potential burden of infectious diseases is sometimes so great that governments treat them as threats to national security. However, such treatment potentially increases the risk that emergency disease-control measures will be ineffective, counterproductive and/or unjust. Research on ethical issues associated with infectious disease is a relatively new and rapidly growing area of academic inquiry, as is research on infectious diseases within the field of security studies. This volume incorporates ethical and security perspectives, thus furthering research in both fields. Its unique focus on the intersection of ethical and security dimensions will, furthermore, generate fresh insights on how governments should respond to infectious disease challenges. Readers should include professionals and scholars working in infectious disease, epidemiology, public health, health law, health economics, public policy, bioethics, medical humanities, health and human rights, social/political philosophy, security studies, and international politics.

This book addresses the many ethical issues and extraordinary risks that nurses and others are facing during the COVID-19 pandemic, which creates physical, emotional, and economic burdens, affecting nurses' overall health and well-being. Nurses are essential front-line clinicians across all health care settings and in every nation. The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel SARs-CoV-2 virus has affected children, adults, and communities within and across all societies. Nurses, too, have contracted the virus and died from the disease. They have also seen their colleagues, family members, and friends hospitalized or in intensive care units struggling to survive. Nursing’s professionalism and disciplinary resolve to care for patients and families amidst confusion, misinformation, and shifting guidelines has been called “heroic” by the public. How much risk should nurses be expected to accept during a pandemic? How do nurses help patients and families find comfort and dignity at the end-of-life? How do we help nurses who are suffering from moral distress and mental health concerns from what they have seen, been asked to do, or are unable to provide? And, how does society move forward from a pandemic that has challenged our basic ethical principles of justice and what is “fair, good and right” in caring for those who need care, including the most vulnerable and nurses themselves? This book addresses these and other ethical concerns that nurses are facing in their day-to-day clinical practice; experiences shared with patients, families, and colleagues. Although this book was written while the pandemic was still raging across the United States and globally, the events needed to be told as they were unfolding. This book helps us to learn from both the successes and failures that are affecting so many across the globe, including those on whom the public relies on to provide quality, compassionate, and expert care when they are sick: nurses.

Preparedness and rigorous planning on community, state, and regional levels are critical to containing the threat of pandemic illness. Steeped in research and recommendations from lessons learned, Pandemic Planning describes the processes necessary for the efficient and effective preparation, prevention, response, and recovery from a pandemic threat. This evidence-based book guides plan development and provides solutions to common strategic, ethical, and practical challenges to pandemic preparedness. Topics discussed include: The current threat of pandemics and how they relate to homeland security and emergency management Leadership and incident management structure as they relate to pandemic preparedness Computer simulation models and data visualization for strengthening prevention and control measures within a community Marketing principles and how they promote pandemic preparedness for a community Lessons learned from pandemic influenza exercises conducted with regional hospitals and how those lessons can be applied to other institutions Government resources available to assist with the planning for and monitoring of a pandemic event Economic and logistic concerns that arise during a pandemic Discussing preparedness across a variety of institutional levels, the authors’ collaboration with national research leaders and community stakeholders has enabled them to assemble the most current and essential information available on pandemic preparedness. Their book distills this information into workable strategies to bolster public health, mitigate risk, and protect the population.

This guidance is an update of WHO global influenza preparedness plan: the role of WHO and recommendations for national measures before and during pandemics, published March 2005 (WHO/CDS/CSR/GIP/2005.5).

This Open Access book highlights the ethical issues and dilemmas that arise in the practice of public health. It is also a tool to support instruction, debate, and dialogue regarding public health ethics. Although the practice of public health has always included consideration of ethical issues, the field of public health ethics as a discipline is a relatively new and emerging area. There are few practical training resources for public health practitioners, especially resources which include discussion of realistic cases which are likely to arise in the practice of public health. This work discusses these issues on a case to case basis and helps create awareness and understanding of the ethics of public health care. The main audience for the casebook is public health practitioners, including front-line workers, field epidemiology trainers and trainees, managers, planners, and decision makers who have an interest in learning about how to integrate ethical analysis into their day to day public health practice. The casebook is also useful to schools of public health and public health students as well as to academic ethicists who can use the book to teach public health ethics and distinguish it from clinical and research ethics.