Open AccessCombating COVID-19 Pandemic in Nepal: Ethical Challenges in an Outbreak
Author(s) -
Aarati Shah,
Ramesh Prasad Aacharya
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of nepal medical association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.176
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1815-672X
pISSN - 0028-2715
DOI - 10.31729/jnma.4959
Subject(s) - medicine , beneficence , social distance , pandemic , isolation (microbiology) , personal protective equipment , confidentiality , health care , outbreak , covid-19 , environmental health , disease , autonomy , law , virology , political science , infectious disease (medical specialty) , microbiology and biotechnology , pathology , biology
Pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 is the largest of its kind of this century. All countries throughout the globe are trying their best to contain the disease and eliminate at the earliest. Efforts are continuing to improve the outcome of the infection in terms of minimizing the morbidity and mortality. As a public health strategy every state has the responsibility of protecting the health of the community and such measures includes the preventive measures like social distancing or even lockdown of the state as a whole restricting the movement of the people, diagnostic measures like testing the suspects, contact tracing and isolation of the patients. Treatment of the infected requires decisions in resource constraint situation particularly ICU beds and ventilators. In the meantime, protecting doctors, nurses, other health workers as well as frontline workers need personal protective equipment which is a scarce commodity. While doing so there might be a compromise in the individual autonomy, privacy, confidentiality, and social justice for the beneficence for the larger community. This is an attempt to explore the ethical quandaries in relation to combating COVID-19 in Nepal by relating the issues with the principles of biomedical ethics.