The Care for Non-COVID-19 Patients: A Matter of Choice or Moral Obligation?

Frontiers in Medicine

article

Bashar Hassan¹  Thalia Arawi² 

[1] Faculty of Medicine, American University of Beirut;American University of Beirut Medical Center

关键词: COVID-19;    coronavirus;    SARS-CoV-2;    non-COVID-19 patients;    ethics;    elective surgeries;    psychological interventions;    mental health;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fmed.2020.564038

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

A male patient Sam (not his real name), suddenly unable to walk, presented to Addington Hospital in Durban, South Africa, a couple of days before the president declared a national state of disaster due to SARS-CoV-2. An MRI scan at Inkosi Albert Luthuli Hospital was needed to establish the suspected diagnosis of Tuberculosis (TB); however, he was told he had to wait for months or even a year, due to the huge strain the aforenamed hospital was facing because of the corona virus. Therefore, Sam was not provided with a clear diagnosis, and thus no proper treatment. He was told that he will not be able to walk again and sent back home to an overcrowded hostel where his family and hundreds of other underprivileged people could contract the disease if it really was TB (1). From South Africa to Canada, due to the massive burden of COVID-19 on the health care systems, Sydney Loney had her mastectomy, which was originally scheduled in mid-March, postponed indefinitely (2). Due to the scarce medical resources SARS-CoV-2 has left hospitals with, patients with deadly infectious diseases like TB, cancers that can metastasize, and numerous other conditions, are being denied medical care. In addition, thousands of elective surgeries are being canceled (3). In this article, we shed light on the ethical challenges imposed by SARS-CoV2 regarding non-COVID-19 patients and raise the possibility of establishing more considerate regulations and specific psychological interventions for this subset of patients.

【 授权许可】

CC BY