Epidemic Ethics is a global community of bioethicists building on pre-existing expertise and resources to provide real-time, trusted, contextual support to communities, policy makers, researchers, and responders in relation to the ethical issues arising out of global health emergencies, with a current focus on the COVID-19 pandemic.
Led by the World Health Organization and supported by key partners including the Fogarty International Center, Global Forum on Bioethics in Research, Global Health Network, Global Network of WHO Collaborating Centres and Wellcome, Epidemic Ethics is governed by a steering committee, details of which will be made available soon.
The core aims of Epidemic Ethics are to:
- Help coordinate and support real-time, contextual ethical decision-making in public health emergencies
- To build ethics capacity globally and locally, to support both preparedness and response
- To conduct empirical and normative research so that we are:
- better prepared for future outbreaks
- addressing outstanding ethical issues from past outbreaks
- To build fair, collaborative partnerships, so that research can be both generated and conducted by ethicists in low and middle-income settings, with a view to growing capacity for the future
- To support the work of the WHO R&D Blueprint for Action to Prevent Epidemics
- To ensure that the outputs of the Network are coordinated, flexible, globally distributed, and positioned to inform and be incorporated into practice
- To publish regular reports on ethical issues and advice provided
If you have experience in bioethics and would like to join the network, please fill out this form.