The Infectious Diseases Act and Resource Allocation during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Bangladesh
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The Infectious Diseases Act and Resource Allocation during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Bangladesh Md. Sanwar Siraj 1
& Rebecca
Susan Dewey 2
& A.
S. M. Firoz Ul Hassan 1
Received: 9 July 2020 / Revised: 15 September 2020 / Accepted: 24 September 2020 # National University of Singapore and Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
Abstract The Infectious Diseases (Prevention, Control and Eradication) Act entered into force officially on 14 November 2018 in Bangladesh. The Act is designed to raise awareness of, prevent, control, and eradicate infectious or communicable diseases to address public health emergencies and reduce health risks. A novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was first identified in Bangladesh on 8 March 2020, and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued a gazette on 23 March, listing COVID-19 as an infectious disease and addressing COVID-19 as a public health emergency. The gazette empowers the government to monitor the spread of infection. Despite there being an infrastructure of research ethics committees in almost all hospitals in Bangladesh, a lack of such committees in the clinical setting often forces healthcare professionals to allocate scarce healthcare resources to the task. These personnel are often either influenced by materialistic matters or guided by the emergency policies, without reaching a consensus on how to allocate scarce resources in times of need, especially in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ethical dilemmas often arise when a number of patients with COVID-19, especially in poor and middle-class areas, are denied care while elites are prioritized to receive such scarce resources. Resource allocation in healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh appears to be unethical and in direct conflict with the biomedical principles of non-maleficence and procedural justice. The findings of this study suggest that the Act needs substantive changes in the stipulation of policy directing hospitals in the provision of resource allocation framework. Furthermore, parliament should produce guidance outlining how to successfully implement the law with the aim of protecting public health in times of emergency, especially the COVID-19 pandemic. Keywords Infectiousdiseases . Resource allocation . Coronavirus . Pandemic . Bangladesh
* Md. Sanwar Siraj [email protected] 1
Department of Government and Politics, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh
2
Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Asian Bioethics Review
Introduction Legal documents guide policy makers, administrators, and healthcare professionals to manage and contain the spread of infectious diseases across a country. The Infectious Diseases (Prevention, Control and Eradication) Act was first passed by the parliament and came into force officially on 14 November 2018 (Infectious Diseases (Prevention, Control and Eradication) Act 2018). The Act is designed to raise awareness of, prevent, control, and eradicate infectious or communicable diseases in order to
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