Ethical challenges in health care: global context, Indian reality
Indian Journal of Medical Ethics
November 25, 26 and 27, 2005
Mumbai, India

The IJME is planning the first National Bioethics Conference in India. The conference aims to establish a regular platform for coming together, sharing experiences, and fostering cooperation among individuals, organisations and institutions concerned with bioethics in India.

Emerging ethical challenges in health care must be viewed in the context of complex national and global interconnections. Rising inequities as a result of the opening of the economy for global capital, the accelerated development of the corporate health sector, the phenomenal increase in cheap drug trials, and the decline of public health sector pose new ethical dilemmas for researchers and health professionals.

The National Bioethics Conference will include the following sub-themes:

1. Ethical challenges in HIV/AIDS: The extremes of cultural, religious, professional and other social responses to the advancing epidemic of HIV/AIDS pose severe ethical challenges in clinical practice, research, public health and health policy. How are exclusion and inclusion criteria defined in the development of vaccines and other preventive technologies? How are researchers and health providers addressing the unique ethical dilemmas of the HIV/AIDS epidemic?
2. Ethics of life and death in the era of hi-tech health care: The increased investment in hi-tech health care highlights ethical complexities in specific areas such as organ transplantation, artificial reproduction, euthanasia, palliative care and the use of sex selection technologies and poses ethical challenges in public policy, resource allocation and addressing inequity.
3. Ethical responsibilities in violence, conflict and religious strife: What are the tensions between health professionals’ religious, caste, ideological and other affiliations and their professional obligations, and how may they be resolved? The subject of health professionals’ ethical responsibilities in conflict situations is crucial, as is the question of researchers’ ethical responsibilities when undertaking studies in such situations.
4. Ethics and equity in clinical trials and other issues: This section will include presentations on issues related to the growth of clinical trials in developing countries.

While the conference is planned to cover these sub-themes, submissions will be accepted on other subjects within the broader framework of health ethics as well.

Please submit abstracts to [email protected] by June 30, 2005.

Writers will be informed of the programme committee’s decision by July 31, 2005.

Conference details, application forms and updates are available at: http://www.issuesinmedicalethics.org/nbc2005.html