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Allocating Resources in Humanitarian Medicine

Allocating Resources in Humanitarian Medicine Fair resource allocation in humanitarian medicine is gaining in importance and complexity, but remains insufficiently explored. It raises specific issues regarding non-ideal fairness, global solidarity, legitimacy in non-governmental institutions and conflicts of interest. All would benefit from further exploration. We propose that some headway could be made by adapting existing frameworks of procedural fairness for use in humanitarian organizations. Despite the difficulties in applying it to humanitarian medicine, it is possible to partly adapt Daniels and Sabin's Accountability for reasonableness to this context. This would require: (1) inclusion of internally explicit decisions and rationales; (2) publicity to donors, local staff, community leaders and governments, as well as frank answers to any beneficiaryor potential beneficiarywho asked for clarification of decisions and their rationale; (3) a consistent reasoning strategy to weigh conflicting views of equity in specific situations; (4) advocacy within the organization as a mechanism for revision and appeals; and (5) internal regulation according to publicly accessible mechanisms. Organizations could generate a common corpus of allocation decisions from which to draw in future similar cases. Importantly, the complexity of these challenges should encourage, rather than hinder, broader discussion on ethical aspects of resource allocation in humanitarian medicine. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Public Health Ethics Oxford University Press

Allocating Resources in Humanitarian Medicine

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References (163)

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright
The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. Available online at www.phe.oxfordjournals.org
Subject
Original Article
ISSN
1754-9973
eISSN
1754-9981
DOI
10.1093/phe/phn042
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Fair resource allocation in humanitarian medicine is gaining in importance and complexity, but remains insufficiently explored. It raises specific issues regarding non-ideal fairness, global solidarity, legitimacy in non-governmental institutions and conflicts of interest. All would benefit from further exploration. We propose that some headway could be made by adapting existing frameworks of procedural fairness for use in humanitarian organizations. Despite the difficulties in applying it to humanitarian medicine, it is possible to partly adapt Daniels and Sabin's Accountability for reasonableness to this context. This would require: (1) inclusion of internally explicit decisions and rationales; (2) publicity to donors, local staff, community leaders and governments, as well as frank answers to any beneficiaryor potential beneficiarywho asked for clarification of decisions and their rationale; (3) a consistent reasoning strategy to weigh conflicting views of equity in specific situations; (4) advocacy within the organization as a mechanism for revision and appeals; and (5) internal regulation according to publicly accessible mechanisms. Organizations could generate a common corpus of allocation decisions from which to draw in future similar cases. Importantly, the complexity of these challenges should encourage, rather than hinder, broader discussion on ethical aspects of resource allocation in humanitarian medicine.

Journal

Public Health Ethics – Oxford University Press

Published: Apr 3, 2009

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