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BIOE THIC AL AND HUMAN RIGHTS CONSIDER ATIONS IN THE SELEC TION PROCESS FOR HEALTH C ARE FOR PATIENTS WITH COVID-19 Dr. in C. Tonatiuh González Heredia Coordinator of the Doctorate in Multidisciplinary Health Research, Research Professor “A”, University Center of Tonala, University of Guadalajara
Mtra. Patricia Elizabeth Silva Colunga B.A. in Marketing, M.A. in Occupational Health Sciences, Ph.D. student in human rights. University Center of Tonala, University of Guadalajara.
RESEARCH
Summary This text aims to reflect on the importance of the role played by bioethics and human rights in the selection processes for health care, in terms of critical hospital medicine, for patients suffering from SARS-CoV-2, or Covid-19. To this end, philosophical, theoretical, and empirical elements are taken from various online sources in the areas of the social sciences and health economics. The essential importance of the right to health is undeniable, and manifests itself in two aspects: the individual and the social. In spite of being an absolute right, however, its exercise and enjoyment depend on the general conditions of society (Varela & Sotelo, 2000). In the case of human rights, the right to health corresponds to second-generation rights, which refer, according to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission, to those “inherent to human nature, without which one cannot live as a human being” (CNDH, 1992). Supported since 1946 at an international level by the World Health Organization and also figuring in the Mexican constitution, where one of its main characteristics is nondiscrimination, the right to health is considered both a good and a universal value, as well as an inalienable and non-renounceable right, which the government is required to ensure. This approach is not alien to bioethics, which places the human being at the center
of universal interest in medical practice, whose main principles include autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. “In global terms, bioethics has positioned itself as an inter- and multidisciplinary task that promotes an integral approach to health, in order to address the tensions and conflicts derived from the clash of values among cultures, weighing both individual and collective interests and emphasizing the protection of groups in conditions of vulnerability” (Secretaría de Salud, 2020). In the case of the current global health crisis caused by Covid-19, and according to the Bioethics Guide for the Allocation of Limited
