Ethical and human rights considerations in public health in low and middle-income countries: an assessment using the case of Uganda’s responses to COVID-19 pandemic

BMC Medical Ethics

Joseph Ochieng¹  Erisa Mwaka Sabakaki¹  Fredrick Nelson Nakwagala²  Nelson K Sewankambo³  John Barugahare⁴ 

[1] Department of Anatomy, School of Biomedical Sciences, College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, P. O. Box 7062, Kampala, Uganda;Department of Internal medicine, Mulago National Referral Hospital, P. O. Box 7051, Kampala, Uganda;Department of Medicine, School of Medicine, Makerere University College of Health Sciences, P. O. Box 7062, Kampala, Uganda;Department of Philosophy, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Makerere University, P. O. Box 7062, Kampala, Uganda;

关键词: Public health;    Human rights;    Ethics;    COVID-19;    Low income countries;    Public health emergencies;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12910-020-00523-0

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundIn response to COVID-19 pandemic, the Government of Uganda adopted public health measures to contain its spread in the country. Some of the initial measures included refusal to repatriate citizens studying in China, mandatory institutional quarantine, and social distancing. Despite being a public health emergency, the measures adopted deserve critical appraisal using an ethics and human rights approach. The goal of this paper is to formulate an ethics and human rights criteria for evaluating public health measures and use it to reflect on the ethical propriety of those adopted by the government of Uganda to contain the spread of COVID-19.Main bodyWe begin by illustrating the value of ethics and human rights considerations for public health measures including during emergencies. We then summarize Uganda’s social and economic circumstances and some of the measures adopted to contain the spread of COVID-19. After reviewing some of the ethics and human rights considerations for public health, we reflect upon the ethical propriety of some of Uganda’s responses to COVID-19. We use content analysis to identify the measures adopted by the government of Uganda to contain the spread of COVID-19, the ethics and human rights considerations commonly recommended for public health responses and their importance. Our study found that some of the measures adopted violate ethics and human rights principles. We argue that even though some human rights can sometimes be legitimately derogated and limited to meet public health goals during public health emergencies, measures that infringe on human rights should satisfy certain ethics and human rights criteria. Some of these criteria include being effective, strictly necessary, proportionate to the magnitude of the threat, reasonable in the circumstances, equitable, and least restrictive. We reflect on Uganda’s initial measures to combat the spread of COVID-19 and argue that many of them fell short of these criteria, and potentially limit their effectiveness.ConclusionThe ethical legitimacy of public health measures is valuable in itself and for enhancing effectiveness of the measures. Such legitimacy depends on the extent to which they conform to ethics and human rights principles recommended for public health measures.

【 授权许可】

CC BY