Live Seminar on Epidemic Ethics: Why should ethics be front and centre to the response to COVID-19? Is it?

CCOUC Director Prof Emily Chan was invited by World Health Organization PHEPREN (Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Ethics Network) to give a presentation in an online seminar “Epidemic Ethics: Why should ethics be front and centre to the response to COVID-19. Is it?” on 20 April 2020.

Prof Chan’s presentation highlighted the importance of the process of applying ethics principles in public health emergency, the translation of research into health emergency response action, catering health emergency research to local needs, responsibility of health emergency research donors in promoting ethical research, the need of health emergency research to benefit the most vulnerable, maintenance of the health service provision mandate, and the social scientific aspect of public health research like psychological stress of caregivers in home self-isolation situation. On the positive side, she pointed out that the global pandemic may allow people in various countries across the globe to have a first-hand experience of health emergency situation, which may facilitate learning from this pandemic to better future public health emergency preparedness and response.

In additional to Prof Chan from Asia, health experts from Europe, Africa and North America also gave presentations in the live seminar with 300 participants from across the globe:

Professor Mike Parker, Director of the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities and the Ethox Centre, University of Oxford
Katherine Littler, Co-Lead of the Global Health Ethics & Governance Unit, World Health Organization, Geneva
Professor Jerome Singh, Head of Ethics and Law at the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA)
Professor Ross Upshur, Head, Division of Clinical Public Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Toronto, Canada

This is the first online seminar from PHEPREN, which is a newly launched global community of bioethicists, established to provide real-time, trusted, contextual support to communities, policy makers, researchers, and responders in relation to the ethical issues arising out of global health emergencies, with a current focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. PHEPREN is led by the World Health Organization and supported by key partners including the Fogarty International Center, Global Forum on Bioethics in Research, Global Health Network, Global Network of WHO Collaborating Centres and Wellcome.

Click here to view this seminar.