Ethical Issues in Health Care in the UAE
Ethics is the heart of health care (Seedhouse, 2003). Health is everybody’s business and everything in health care involves some degree of morality. Working in health, health care development and delivery, health services planning and provision as well as managing in the health environment and health assessment involve moral behavior. So also are public health dimensions such as health protection, illness prevention and health promotion activities. This article investigates ethical issues in health care in the UAE and identifies a number of ethics related issues and problems. They include malpractices and botched operations, inadequate information on procedures and cost to patients, sale of prescription only drugs over the counter, designer babies and Doctors being remunerated on commission basis. The article concludes that these ethical issues may have adverse effects on health care provision, accessibility and affordability. The article suggests a number of strategies to address the issues including new legislation prohibiting commission payments to medical professionals, enforcement of existing legislation and professional ethics, general public awareness campaigns and education.