Doctors in UK warned they will have to decide who lives and who dies
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Coronavirus patients may have life-saving treatment withdrawn if others with the virus are more likely to survive, according to new guidance issued to UK doctors.
Health workers could be forced to make “grave decisions” should hospitals become overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, the latest advice from the British Medical Association (BMA) states.
The document warns that decisions around rationing scarce resources, such as ventilators, could determine whether large numbers of patients will receive life-saving treatment or not.
According to the new BMA guidance, doctors will face decisions “which mean some patients may be denied intensive forms of treatment that they would have received outside a pandemic”.
The BMA’s guidance says that during the peak of the pandemic doctors may have to assess a person’s eligibility for treatment based on a “capacity to benefit quickly” basis.
It also states that one of the “guiding principles” for doctors during a pandemic is that “everyone matters and everyone matters equally, but this does not mean that everyone will be treated the same”.
Dr John Chisholm, chairman of the BMA’s medical ethics committee, said: “Looking ahead to the coming weeks, if hard choices are required, we know they will be contested. There will be anger and pain.
The deaths of another 563 coronavirus patients in the UK were announced on Wednesday, the country’s biggest daily increase since the outbreak began.
A total of 2,352 people with COVID-19 are now confirmed to have died in the UK.
