Conclusion

It is important that the ethical principles for a pandemic are relevant to and belong to everyone, including the disabled people in our communities.

Our shared principles give us a shared basis for decisions. Many of us, in many different situations, will still have to make hard choices. But, in general, if we base our choices on agreed principles and make our decisions with good will and reasonable judgement, we can expect to get through a pandemic, together. As Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO said, ‘no one is safe until everyone is safe’, or as the whakataukī states ‘He waka eke noa’ – in the next pandemic, we truly will be all in it together.395