I have written elsewhere about how the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in dangerous and unethical responses like ventilator rationing, unilateral DNRs, and some states ordering nursing homes and other long-term care facilities to accept coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals. But the Covid-19 crisis has also spawned new ideas such as the American Clinicians Academy On Medical Aid in Dying’s policy […]
Sorry to disappoint, but today will feature news not of the Wuflu variety. Instead, I wanted to bring you another update in Japan’s steady population decline. Perhaps it is no surprise, but for the ninth year running the Japanese population has declined. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, at the beginning of October last year […]
The guidelines appear to ignore the Government’s Ethical Framework for Decision Making in a Pandemic, which warn hospitals not to exclude elderly people from treatment on the basis of age.
The Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) has confirmed that almost one-third of nursing homes in Ireland have the Cornavirus, with clusters of Covid-19 now in 155 of the residential care facilities. Professor Jack Lambert, who specialises in infectious diseases at the Mater hospital, has warned that the spread of the virus in nursing homes is “a catastrophe […]
A new study has shown that Irish nursing homes appear to be hit worse by Covid-19 than some other European countries. The international study by Adelina Comas-Herrera and Joseba Zalakain was published by the International Long Term Care Policy Network and examined mortality in care home residents during the coronavirus crisis. In looking at in […]
A leading charity in the UK has claimed the coronavirus is “running wild” in care homes for older people. Caroline Abrahams, the charity director for Age UK said the figures being released by the authorities in the country were “airbrushing older people out like they don’t matter”. She says the official death toll for Britain is not […]
While the ongoing global shutdown of business is highly damaging to the economy and jobs, most world leaders have made the calculation that stopping the coronavirus is worth the economic turmoil and disruption to daily life. The risk of letting covid-19 spread through the population is simply too great, and they seem to be taking […]
Two days ago the number of nursing homes with clusters of coronavirus infections in Ireland was 50. Within 24 hours that figure had doubled to 99 homes. This is very worrying news. A cluster is defined as “three or more COVID-19 cases in a single institution for a 72-hour period”. There are about 560 nursing […]
Amid the Coronavirus pandemic, palliative care specialist Dr Kathryn Mannix urges people to talk about dying; from her experience, most ‘very sick people’ – ‘[f]rom teenagers to pensioners’ – although mostly ‘afraid that their illness and death will cast a shadow over the people they love’ find themselves ‘utterly unable to discuss this worry with […]
A GP surgery in South Wales is apologising for asking some patients ‘to complete a “do not resuscitate” form in case their conditions deteriorated due to coronavirus’; the letter from Llynfi Surgery in Maesteg ‘said that indicating they would not want to be resuscitated had “several benefits”’, informing them that ‘people with life-limiting illnesses who […]
A coalition of nine charities for older people has warned that ‘[d]enying the elderly access to intensive care units’ in the current Coronavirus pandemic is ‘“discriminatory, ageist and morally wrong”’; following Telegraph reports of ‘a major London NHS trust’ saying that ‘“very poorly patients with coronavirus may need to be on a ventilator for extended […]
Twenty years ago, the Catholic bioethicists of Australia came together to write the first ever Code of Ethical Standards for Catholic Health and Aged Care Services in Australia. Two years of robust discussion, informed by wide consultation, followed by even more robust discussion resulted in a set of guidelines which have stood the test of time. […]