The ethical dilemma of ventilator sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic

摘要

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to a significant shortage of medical supplies, including Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), ventilators, and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machines (ECMO). The demand and supply ratio of these equipment has gone out of control in many hardest-hit COVID-19 parts of the world. From a health care point of view, the chaos created by this pandemic has compelled health care professionals to take unprecedented and difficult steps to allow the proper allocation of these resources to save lives of those affected by the virus and to also protect the vulnerable population from contracting the virus. The decision to allocate ventilators to critically ill patients, in particular, has been the toughest decision for health care professionals to make due to its ethical complexity. Similarly, the proposal for using a single ventilator on more than one patient has been met with significant ethical challenges.