Epidemics

An unprecedented disease outbreak in a certain geographical location is epidemic. It can be due to both communicable and noncommunicable diseases, but the ethical issues that arise out of epidemics of communicable diseases have been given considerations, mainly with the advent of HIV/AIDS and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR Tb) and emergence of new diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Consequently, in bioethics, the discussion of the ethical issues out of epidemics, especially that out of communicable diseases, has been a recent addition. This entry mainly considers epidemics in this sense, though it briefly discusses epidemics of noncommunicable diseases, which are yet to occupy a proper place in the bioethical literature. In general, the entry discusses three major ethical issues related to allocation of resources, healthcare workers, and public health measures, which arise out of epidemics of communicable diseases and are pertinent in the context of global bioethics. By global bioethics, the entry here adheres to the original connotation of “global bioethics” as propounded by the American cancer specialist Van Rensselaer Potter in 1970.