Ethics, pandemic and environment; looking at the future of low middle income countries
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(2020) 19:182
REVIEW
Open Access
Ethics, pandemic and environment; looking at the future of low middle income countries Faouzia Tanveer1, Ali Talha Khalil2*, Muhammad Ali1 and Zabta Khan Shinwari3,4
Abstract COVID-19 which started in Wuhan, China and swiftly expanded geographically worldwide, including to Low to Middle Income Countries (LMICs). This in turn raised numerous ethical concerns in preparedness, knowledge sharing, intellectual property rights, environmental health together with the serious constraints regarding readiness of health care systems in LMICs to respond to this enormous public health crisis. From the restrictions on public freedom and burgeoning socio-economic impacts to the rationing of scarce medical resources, the spread of COVID-19 is an extraordinary ethical dilemma for resource constrained nations with less developed health and research systems. In the current crisis, scientific knowledge and technology has an important role to play in effective response. Emergency preparedness is a shared responsibility of all countries with a moral obligation to support each other. This review discusses the ethical concerns regarding the national capacities and response strategies in LMICs to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the deep link between the environment and the increasing risk of pandemics. Keywords: Coronavirus, Pandemic, Ethics, Environment, LMICs
Introduction Like the previous outbreaks of coronaviruses i.e. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the ongoing pandemic COVID-19 has characterized that the infectious diseases represent a problem that does not recognize borders, race, ethnicity, religion, caste or any other status quo. Now known as “COVID-19”, “SARS-CoV-2”, “2019nCoV”, the virus has already made a huge impact on a global scale [1] and changed human ways of thinking and characterizing the problem. COVID-19 is an issue beyond borders, thus necessitates a globally coherent, combined, inclusive and holistic approach which can help in the reduction of transmission and overall risk mitigation, which otherwise, is predicted to impact * Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] 2 Department of Pathology, Lady Reading Hospital (MTI), Peshawar, Pakistan Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
entire human race. According to the WHO situational report on 6th April, 2020, the total number of global cases surged up to 1,210,956 [2], with almost every country affected or threatened by the geographical expansion of SARS-CoV-2. The grand total of the total infections as of 13th Sept, 2020, is 28,637,952 with death toll of 917,417 [3]. A summary of the statistics taken from the WHO showing the data of 6th April 2020 and 13th September 2020 is indicated in inset Fig. 1 revealing the regional distribution of the SARS-CoV-2 cases and rate of mortalities. International regimes are on high alert to stop its spread, however, as far as the global scenario is concerned, countries and
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