Ethical Issues in Combating the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 infection, which emerged at the end of 2019 and turned into a pandemic in a short time, has caused very important problems in the economy, education, science and social life, especially health, globally, all over the world. There are two important areas in the fight against this infection, which has not been seen as a pandemic before in the history of medicine, including preventing the spread of the disease and treating the disease. The first of these is the measures and practices that fall within the field of Public Health, in order to reduce, limit and eventually stop the spread of infection. The second area of ​​treatment, on the one hand, consists of treatments for the symptoms at home, mostly for mild and moderate cases. It also includes treatments in intensive care units, especially due to the deterioration of lung functions. Although there are some medications used in the treatment process, there is no effective treatment that heals the disease and a vaccine that prevents its occurrence.

The aim of the project, designed within this general framework, will be to reveal the ethical dimension of planning, decision-making and practical applications in two interrelated areas, prevention and treatment, in combating the COVID-19 Pandemic, to conduct normative analysis, and to be based on the roadmap to be followed in this and similar pandemics. to reveal ethical algorithms. Here, the main goal is to conduct the ethical research required for legally legitimate, economically realistic, ethically justifiable and socially acceptable solutions in the COVID-19 Pandemic and to present the results.

Health Protection Measures (Prevention) from these two areas identified in the context of the COVID-19 Pandemic
plans, decisions taken and activities implemented at the level of
Ethical dilemmas and conflicting ethical values ​​and human rights and freedoms within these dilemmas will be identified and analyzed. In the other field of treatment, ethical problems regarding the fair distribution of limited resources in health services, which are already the subject of medical ethics, will be investigated in the context of pandemic ethics. The most important issue here is the determination and evaluation of the ethical norms that should be based on ethical triage due to the accumulation of intensive care units in some European countries during the COVID-19 Pandemic process. In determining the ethical structure of this triage, relevant ethical theories and arguments will be critically analyzed.

In this context, our project will evaluate the results of the related fields with an ethical algorithm output.
The purpose of this algorithm will be to make decisions and plan in the future in similar disasters such as pandemics.
Considering the socio-economic structure of our country, a normative infrastructure for applications
is the preparation.