Question

Topic: Tuberculosis in India

Interventions:

India has the biggest burden of TB. The government spends a major portion of health funds to prevent TB. In coordination with many health care organisations at world level developing health care plans and different national treatment strategies to remove the countries from the topmost list. The main interventions that are currently being used to prevent or treat the disease in the population are:

1.      Early screening

2.      Health awareness and prevention

3.      Provision of free treatment

Early screening means detection of cases at an early stage itself to prevent progression and spreading. It can be made by making people aware of such disease and the health care plans available to them.

Health awareness and prevention include health education and teaching the population about the preventive measures to be followed. Some of them are:

·         Try not to utilize Public Transportation.

·         Remain at home from work, school, or other open spots.

·         Utilize a fan or open windows to move around outside air.

·         Accept the majority of your meds as they're endorsed until your specialist takes you off them.

·         Continuously spread your mouth with a tissue when you hack or sniffle. Seal the tissue in a plastic sack, at that point discard it.

·         Try not to visit other individuals and don't welcome them to visit you.

·         Keep all your physical check-ups.

·         Wash your hands in the case of sneezing or coughing.

Provision of free treatment even in private and public institutions which will encourage the population to take the treatment with compliance.

Task:

An ethical analysis of the intervention(s) using one of the public health ethics frameworks. You are free to choose any of the frameworks, whichever one is appropriate. (300 words and please no copy paste)

Answer 1

Ans) A framework of ethics analysis geared specifically for public health is needed, both to provide practical guidance for public health professionals and to highlight the defining values of public health, values that differ in morally relevant ways from values that define clinical practice and research.

- Public policy is based on many factors in addition to public health goals and ethical reasoning.

- Weighing alternatives according to this public health ethics framework should lead to an ethically acceptable option, but it may not lead to the politically preferable option for a given time.

- That politics often takes a divergent and somewhat unpredictable path, however, is not an excuse for abandoning ethics analysis when a public health proposal is up for discussion.

- An ethics analysis must always be conducted, both because bringing truth, fairness, and respect to our work is right in itself and also because, from a more utilitarian perspective, public health work will be more effective if we do.

- Engaging in the steps of an ethics analysis makes us meticulous in our reasoning, requiring us to advocate interventions on the basis of facts and not merely belief.

- Further, an ethics analysis holds us to high standards, not only for scientific method but also for how respectfully we communicate with and involve constituent communities.

- The involvement of communities will help identify the public health threats divergent groups face and will create, if not partnerships, at least—one can hope—a reasonable amount of trust.

- To succeed, the field of public health must gain the public's trust that the inevitable higher proportions of government involvement and population targeting imposed by public health, relative to other branches of health care, are appropriate and in these various communities' best interests.

- Public health professionals must go through the steps of an ethics analysis to assure the public of their integrity.

- The public must feel confident that public health professionals will offer only those proposals that will improve the health of the public, that proposed measures are minimally burdensome, and that a fair procedure has determined that the magnitude of the problem and the ensuing benefits justify overriding conflicting moral claims.

- It is reasonable to assume that the public will be concerned about which functions are necessary and which are overly burdensome, offensive, or simply wasteful.

- This process, then, must be integrated, constant, and ongoing. The most important asset that public health can have is the public's trust that work is being done on its own behalf.

- In such a context, public health professionals can and must advocate what they believe, on balance, are the ethically best approaches for furthering social justice and the public's health.