Center for Bioethics' graduate Amos Laar, PhD recently published the article "Rationing health and social goods during pandemics: Guidance for Ghanian decision makers" in SAGE Publishings' Clinical Ethics journal. Dr. Laar is an associate professor of Public Health at the University of Ghana, Legon's School of Public Health and researches the intersection of social sciences, bioethics, and public health. The paper includes several co-authors, including the Center for Bioethics' director Debra DeBruin, PhD.
Abstract:
"Healthcare rationing during pandemics has been widely discussed in global bioethics literature. However, existing scenarios and analyses have focused on high income countries, except for very few disease areas such as HIV treatment where some analyses related to African countries exist. We argue that the lack of scholastic discourse, and by extension, professional and democratic engagement on the subject constitute an unacceptable ethical omission. Not only have African governments failed to develop robust ethical plans for pandemics, ethicists in this region have been unable to ignite public discourse on rationing. Therefore, we aim to initiate a debate on how rationing health and social goods could be done ethically in Ghana during the current and future pandemics."
