Ethical Resource Allocation in Public Health Emergencies

An emergency public health could have a profound effect on the health care system. One of main effects of such events in health care organization is lack of resources. This problem lead to rationing and prioritizing of scarce medical resources. This strategy is accepted widely in response to large scale health emergencies. The fair and just allocation of medical resources requires political and ethical imperatives for the efficient management and distribution of these resources. The aim of this review article is to understand factors which must be considered when resource allocation will be happen.Method: PubMed, Science direct, Scopus, and Google Scholar Databases were searched in January of 2016. Key words of search were: Disaster OR public health emergency” AND resource allocation” OR resource Prioritizing AND ethic”.Result: Desire to maximizing resource, protection of vulnerable population, intergenerational equity, social functioning, social equity, fair processes were factors consider public health. Medical need, consequence of dealing treatment, the probability of patient recover and the duration of need of the scarce resource are some of factors which consider to patient at time of resource allocation in disaster situation.Conclusion: In these situation public good should be weighted the good of individual one. Therefore, considering ethical values which in disaster response situation bring and preserve public good could develop public trust to health care workers and health system.