ETHICAL DILEMMA OF CONDUCTING RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH INTERVENTIONS IN EMERGING DISEASES: THE CASE OF COVID-19 (SHORT COMMUNICATION)

Abstract

In the recent past, epidemics (such as Covid-19, SARS, Ebola, and MERS) have posed ethical dilemma to health professionals where research and public health programs have to be undertaken concurrently. Clinical research is essential for the development and administration of safe and effective diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccine products. Clinical research should therefore be of scientific and societal value, and should be carried out with the highest scientific validity standards before the vaccines/drugs are used for interventions in public health programmes. In epidemics, however, there emerges an urgent need to control the spread diseases Activities during epidemics end up as hybrids of research and public health intervention. This raises ethical concerns about validity, as well as the ethical obligations that come with conducting research and public health intervention programs. This is because the ethical obligations of conducting research differ from those of carrying out public health programmes. Since determining the techniques or combination of tools and approaches that will ensure that epidemics do not resurge or spread in the future is difficult, a balanced framework with justifications and ethical obligations to address both research and health intervention programmes in epidemics is required. Failure to adhere to the current research regulations puts at risk lives of study participants, while failure to undertake the public health interventions/programmes can lead to high rates of mortality due to rapid spread of diseases during epidemics. Regulations, guidelines and institutional reviews of research conventions should therefore be evaluated and reconfigured in order to address or accommodate the ethical uncertainties and inadequacies encountered in public health intervention programmes in epidemics.