Individual Privacy and Collective Healthcare- myassignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about theIndividual Privacy and Collective Right to Healthcare. Answer: This essay critically analyses the importance of m maintaining balance between individual privacy rights and collective right to security as pertain to health care facilities. Most of the people have fundamental misconception about the nature as well as core importance of privacy[1]. The misunderstanding becomes more complicated when they do not understand that there is a far more effect of privacy on the recent society. This is the reason why the authorities of the developed countries like the UK, US re undertaking a kind of universal surveillance. Privacy is often misinterpreted to be purely an individuals right which is sometimes misconstrued as anti-community right which implores an individual to hide from the society. In this view, there will be a transparent society where none of the people will have any privacy in their lives. However, in reality privacy has a collective benefit that supports coherent societies[2]. According to critics, privacy is not only hiding something or having control over the life but the more controlled people the society has, the more positively and freely they behave. Therefore, privacy has a vital function for maintaining balance in the society, not creating division between society and individual. As most of the people in the free society believes that privacy act against the collective right, the concept of surveillance has also been misunderstood. Ina democratic society, surveillance has a crucial role to play[3]. It has vital role in maintaining the human rights terms, which ultimately controls the aspects of fundamental rights for instance, freedom of expression, association and availing other necessities such as health care. There has been an open debate on the status of health care in many democratic countries. Some people grant this facility to be individual privilege, on the other hand some assume this to be a collective right. However, integration of the individual rights with the structural policy changes can expand the scope for all encompassing privilege. Both the rights and the global health must be first transcending the individual versus collective division then unite them so that it can provide the best facilities for the individuals along with the whole population at large[4]. The traditional liberal theories of human rights support highest attainable levels of health facilities and restricting these rights for survive the individual perspective will prevent the advancement of planning, founding new public policies, monitoring, accountability and the proper assessment[5]. This is the reason, many UN human rights bodies seek information from the state parties so that they can utilise individua ls data for planning and mapping access to the health services for serving collective perspective. By using individuals information, the UN bodies aim to serve the most vulnerable populations and implement respective policies for realisation of right to avail health care facilities. In addition to this, collective perspectives on the right to avail health care facilities, have proved to be potential for managing the non-communicable diseases. These are done by raising awareness about the healthier lifestyles, caring for the people in need and formulating particular plans for preventing such diseases. This however includes the governments obligation under international regulations for preventing violations. The individualistic perspective place primary importance on the privacy, liberty as well as informed consent for the individual persons. In the public health interventions, there are issues such as immunisation often infringe on the rights of the individuals. This however, faces challenge in protecting the privacy of the individuals. Hence, the proper treatment to control of the infectious diseases cannot be possible as these are highly stigmatised by the individuals in terms of religion[6]. In treating dangerous sexually-transmitted diseases like HIV/AIDS, the health care agencies cannot access names and personal details due to the individual privacy issues. The concept of Nonmaleficence is not to do any harm to the individuals. In some cases, the compulsory vaccination adversely affects the health of the individuals. Hence the authorities compensate them aiming to protect the welfare of public in broader sense[7]. Collective right to health is promoted by the idea of social justice which asks for encouraging access to avail basic health facilities. In such cases the authorities provide free vaccinations and other cares to one particular social group in order to maintain balance in the society. However, with such actions, the agencies are narrowing down the unjust inequalities among the social classes. This kind of problems can be seen only in the individualistic societies. In the group oriented cultures, the health agencies take more initiatives to curb the intention of maintaining privacy by the individuals[8]. To prevent harm from occurring to others, the methods of isolation, compulsory treatment and quarantine are applied by violating cultural and religious beliefs. Sometimes. The healthcare practitioners or the state governments often use the method of paternalism were they can take actions to protect the health as well as welfare of the people even against their will. Sometimes the indiv iduals, suffer from immaturity, ignorance, cognitive disability by holding false beliefs regarding the methods of treatments. In such cases, the efforts are taken through persuasion or compulsion. Hence it is quite logical to infringe personal privacy for greater good. In discussing the issue of individual privacy rights over the collective society, one can have referred to the violation of justice across nations where the developed and rich countries are disturbing the individual privacy of the under-developed or developing countries by extracting information of the types of diseases causing epidemic. However, there are both ethical issues as well as issues associated with the security of lives of the people across the globe[9]. Outbreaks of infectious diseases resulted into epidemics which can cross national borders quickly through illegal immigration, mass tourism, visits and refugees. Though these methods, highly infectious diseases extend their range globally. This is the reason why the developed nations are assisting the developing countries by means of providing various medical facilities, lifesaving drugs and vaccines so that collective good can exceed the limits of individual privacy. Bibliography: Burton, Paul R., Madeleine J. Murtagh, Andy Boyd, James B. Williams, Edward S. Dove, Susan E. Wallace, Anne-Marie Tasse et al. "Data Safe Havens in health research and healthcare."Bioinformatics31, no. 20 (2015): 3241-3248. Dau-Schmidt, Kenneth G., Matt Finkin, and Robert Covington.Legal protection for the individual employee. West Academic, 2016. Dove, Edward S. "Privacy and Healthcare Data: Choice of Control to Choice and Control." (2017): 158. Li, He, Jing Wu, Yiwen Gao, and Yao Shi. "Examining individuals adoption of healthcare wearable devices: An empirical study from privacy calculus perspective."International journal of medical informatics88 (2016): 8-17. Lindblad, S., S. Ernestam, A. D. Van Citters, C. Lind, T. S. Morgan, and E. C. Nelson. "Creating a culture of health: evolving healthcare systems and patient engagement."QJM: An International Journal of Medicine110, no. 3 (2017): 125-129.