Ethical and Legal Implications for Disaster Management - Case Study Example

Session Long: Ethical and Legal Implications for Disaster Management Session Long Paper Module 3 TUI BHS 420 Keitra Miller Legal and ethical Implications in Disaster Management Ethical and Legal Implications for Disaster Management With a dramatic increase in the number of disasters, both natural and man-made, over the past few years and hence increased the role of disaster risk mitigation policies many fold. Timely and effective disaster response is fundamental to ensure that disaster struck population and areas receive aid and resources so as to assist them to return to “normality”.

Medical aid is the central form of assistance that first responders to disasters provide, as inhabitants recuperating from the after effects of the disaster have high vulnerability to health related risks. Because of the primary importance of medical responders in disasters, it is key to discuss and consider the legal and ethical issues associated with the stakeholders involved in disaster response and recovery work (Ashton). Main Ethical and Legal Issues: Priority setting: Triage at Disastor Scenes In the context of disaster management, triage signifies the way by which treatment priorities are set (UNDP).

It is the process for classifying disaster victims in order to determine who should receive treatment first but it is a argumentative topic and has both legal and ethical implications – if all victims have the same legal (human) rights to healthcare then how can the response team justify the tagging of certain people as having higher urgency for aid than others? Therefore, a lot of thought has gone into considering the ethics of triage. Declaring a State of Emergency Even though, there are defined the norms of declaring a “state of emergency” such as that by The Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, the notion of ‘State of Emergency’ is controversial subject with respect to legal issues and ethics as many people believe that the powers given to governments under “emergency rules” legislation diminish civil liberties and hence have the potentially lead to abuses of power by the government or disaster response teams (Soliman and Rogge).

Questions have also arisen around the legitmacy of ‘state of emergency’ acts in cases of disasters particularly natural catastrophes. Data Protection Data Protection is a huge issue in medical domain especially related to patient confidentiality and physician oath of integrity. There are a number of evolved ethics and legal procedures set for normal practices. However, in case of disaster scenarios, an abundance of data will be generated regarding event’s victims or patients. Because of the fact that there is no normal clinical settings or structured medical staff response, ideally extra care has to be made with respect to data protection and processtion.

Hence, disaster situations could also trigger unique moral dilemmas concerning data protection. Works Cited UNDP. "Disaster Management Ethics." 1997. Ashton, Holly. "Legal and Ethical Aspects of First Medical Response to Disasters – Background Paper ." Centre for Science, Society and Citizenship , 2008. Soliman, Hussein H. and Mary E. Rogge. "Ethical Considerations in Disaster Services: A Social Work Perspective ." Electronic Journal of Social Work (n.d.): 1-7.