Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management: Ethics

Overview

Ethical challenges arise throughout emergency and disaster risk management (EDRM) in health and other sectors. Decisions about priorities in planning and response include ethical aspects, along with pragmatic, economic, political and other considerations. Resource allocation and decisions about what to fund or not fund involve ethical components, particularly views on justice. Responders face various triage decisions, including which communities to help first, which individuals to treat first, and when to withdraw from a locale to provide assistance elsewhere. Policies and agendas of responding agencies can create ethical challenges, such as how coercive public health measures require all members of a community to act in certain ways, whether they want to or not.