"Ethical Issues in the Romanian Pharmaceutical System in the Context of Covid-19 Pandemic"

"COVID-19 infection is a disease caused by the new type Coronaviruses family strain, SARS-CoV-2. It was first identified in China’s Wuhan City in December 2019. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared the public health emergency with COVID-19 a pandemic. As in the other affected countries, Romania’s health care professionals are on the front line. Among them, community pharmacy and clinical pharmacy teams are facing special ethical situations related to issues as: the provision of protective equipment, sudden medicines price rises, a general increased need in pharmaceutical services of the population concerned about COVID-19, a possible shortage of drugs due to the cessation of their import, ensuring on-going provision of pharmaceutical services in the case of significant volumes of staff absences. Also, as our country goes through the four scenarios of fighting the new coronavirus based on number of declared positive patients, complex ethical issues could appear for the pharmacist. Thus, significant ethical problems can arise due to the conflict between the duty of care that the pharmacist has assumed by saying and taking the Hippocrates oath and the high exposure of infection that she/he and implicitly those close to her/him have in this situation. Critical situation that may occur in the last two scenarios could raise serious ethical problems related to the violation of fundamental rights for health care professionals and implicitly for pharmacists. The objective of this work is to assess the ethical issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Romanian pharmaceutical system. "