Ethical Reflection on the Prevention and Treatment of Major Infectious Diseases / 中国医学伦理学

ABSTRACT

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has made numerous people realize the danger of major infectious diseases, as well as the scarcity and finiteness of medical resources as strategic resources. Traditionally, medical resources are allocated based on the principles of "benefit maximization", "first come, first served", "fairness" and "transparent and reasonable decision-making". Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic broke this rule, and made it difficult to choose in the condition of overwhelmed medical resources. By exploring the allocation criteria of scarce medical resources and the triage, this paper explains the formation reasons of futile treatment, analyzes the countermeasures and basic principles for hospitals at the peak of pandemic, proposes the triage treatment and collective decision-making, so as to improve the efficiency of treatment.