Wits Ethics Alive symposium this week

Under the theme, 'Healthcare Professionals and Social Conscience', three internationally-renowned experts in the field of Bioethics and Human Rights will comment on South African issues of inequities in healthcare provision and the responsibilities of health professionals toward their patients and communities.

Dr Jeff Blackmer, executive director of the Office of Ethics, Professionalism and International Affairs at the Canadian Medical Association, will review the ethical rationale for Health Care Professionals' (HCPs) social conscience and advocacy. He will give specific examples of challenges and successes, and provide a framework for ethical activity in this area, including reasonable limitations on the right of HCPs to advocate.

Dr Anthony Egan, lecturer at the Steve Biko Centre for Bioethics, will tackle the theory of conscience and examine how it affects the ethical practice of HCPs, with a historical outline of conscience from classical antiquity through Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions and further through to an enlightenment secularisation (and sometimes psychologisation) of its basic principles. He will inspect public health service corruption as a professional moral dilemma for HCPs.

Kayum Ahmed, CEO of the South African Human Rights Commission, will look at health care, as a human right, and how the Bill of Rights in the South African Constitution gives this human right to health care.

Professor Tawana Kupe, deputy vice chancellor (Finance) of the university, will open the symposium. These presentations are followed by a panel discussion.

Week's activities

Throughout the week, events will be hosted at various teaching hospitals in and around Johannesburg under the 2013 theme, 'Healthcare Professionals and Social Conscience'. There will also be a strong focus on undergraduate student activities including debates, the MPS Bioethics Essay competition and the Bioethics Poster and Art competition.

Professor Kupe says, "The World Medical Association's Statement on Patient Advocacy and Confidentiality states: 'Medical practitioners have an ethical duty and a professional responsibility to act in the best interests of their patients without regard to age, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability or disability, race, religion, culture, beliefs, political affiliation, financial means or nationality.' This will be explored in full during Ethics Alive Week."