Analysis of ethical considerations of COVID‑19 vaccination: lessons for future

BMC Medical Ethics

Research

Arash Ziapour¹  Murat Yıldırım²  Roya Malekzadeh³  Ghasem Abedi³  Afshin Amirkhanlou⁴ 

[1] Cardiovascular Research Center, Health Institute, Imam-Ali Hospital, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran;Department of Psychology, Faculty of Science and Letters, Agri Ibrahim Cecen University, Ağrı, Türkiye;Graduate Studies and Research, Lebanese American University, Beirut, Lebanon;Department of Public Health, Faculty of Health, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran;General Practitioner, Shohada Hospital, Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran;

关键词: Vaccination;    COVID-19;    Coronavirus;    Vaccine;    Ethics;    Public health emergency;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12910-023-00969-y

 received in 2023-08-05, accepted in 2023-10-09,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundSince the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, different countries sought to manufacture and supply effective vaccines to control the disease and prevent and protect public health in society. The implementation of vaccination has created many ethical dilemmas for humans, which must be recognized and resolved. Therefore, the present study was conducted to analyze the ethical considerations in vaccination against COVID-19 from the perspective of service providers.MethodsThe present qualitative research was conducted in 2022 in the north of Iran. The participants included 23 health workers with at least five years of work experience and members of the COVID-19 vaccination team. The data were initially collected through systematic semi-structured interviews, then snowball sampling and finally continued until data saturation. The next steps were transcription of interviews, identification of meaning units, coding, categorization based on similarity and symmetry, extraction of themes and the analysis of themes through content analysis.ResultsThe analysis of participants’ experiences led to the extraction of five main categories of themes and fifteen sub-categories of the ethical considerations of COVID-19 vaccination. Safe and standard vaccine production, vaccine supply, fairness, respect for autonomy, and accountability were the main categories. The subcategories included compliance with scientific and ethical procedures, effectiveness and profitability of vaccine, absence of severe adverse effects, allocation of resources for vaccine supply, vaccine availability, diversity and comprehensiveness of alternative vaccines, vaccination prioritization, prioritization of the vulnerable populations of society, autonomy of patient (equal rights), autonomy of community, autonomy of service providers, reporting correct information, reporting vaccine side effects, public trust and acceptance.ConclusionThe health system managers should be adequately prepared to solve the ethical problems posed by COVID-19 vaccination. Therefore, it is recommended to avoid haste in vaccination and pay more attention to vaccination safety standards, provide sufficient resources for a comprehensive vaccine supply, pay close attention to collective interests versus individual interests, and meet community needs.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s) 2023