1st Edition

Ethical Challenges for Military Health Care Personnel Dealing with Epidemics

Edited By Daniel Messelken, David Winkler Copyright 2018
    196 Pages
    by Routledge

    196 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book examines the issue of ethics in the context of the provision of military health care in an epidemic.



    Outbreaks of epidemics like Ebola trigger difficult ethical challenges for civilian and military health care personnel. This book offers theoretical reflections combined with reports from recent military and NGO missions in the field. The authors of this volume focus on military medical ethics adding a distinct voice to the topic of epidemics and infectious diseases. While military health care personnel are always crucially involved during disaster relief operations and large-scale public health emergencies, most of the current literature treats ethical issues during epidemics from a more general perspective without taking into account the specifics of the military context. The contributions in this volume provide first-hand insights into some of the ethical issues encountered by military health care personnel in missions during the Ebola outbreak in 2014/2015. This practical perspective is complimented by academic analyses and theoretical reflections on ethical issues associated with epidemics.



    This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, ethics and African politics.

    Introduction, Daniel Messelken & David T. Winkler 1. Preparing for operation GRITROCK: military medical ethics challenges encountered in the planning stages of the UK Ebola response mission, Heather Draper, Simon Jenkins, Lizzy Bernthal, Catherine Hale, Jeremy Henning & Chris Gibson 2. The Ebola Response Team Deployment in the Guinea Republic: Organizational, Ethical, Legal Issues and a Problem of Responsibility, Ivan Kholikov & Kira Sazonova 3. Between ignorance, misperception and dilemma – taking an ethical, epidemiological, and strategic look at crisis management during the 2014/15 Ebola outbreak in Liberia, Christian Janke 4. The Canadian Armed Forces and its Role in the Canadian Response to the Ebola Epidemic – Ethical and Moral Issues that Guided Policy Decisions, Paul Eagan 5. "If you let it get to you…": Moral distress, ego-depletion, and mental health among military health care providers in deployed service, Jillian Horning, Lisa Schwartz, Matthew Hunt & Bryn Williams-Jones 6. Reaching out to Ebola victims: coercion, persuasion or an appeal for self-sacrifice?, Philippe Calain & Marc Poncin 7. A history of quarantine: the continued controversy over its legitimacy, Cécile Bensimon & Ana Komparic 8. Ebola response & mandatory quarantine in the U.S. military: an ethical analysis of the DoD ‘controlled monitoring’ policy, Sheena Eagan 9. On the duty to care during epidemics, Daniel Messelken 10. Deploying military doctors to stem deadly epidemics, Paul Gilbert

    Biography

    Daniel Messelken is Research Associate at the at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, where he leads the Zurich Center for Military Medical Ethics.



    David Winkler is Chairman of the ICMM (International Committee of Military Medicine) Centre of Reference for Education on International Humanitarian Law and Ethics, Switzerland.