General principles and practice ofthe ethics of public health surveillance:comments on the situation in Italy

摘要

The “WHO Guidelines on ethical issues in public health surveillance” were publishedshortly after the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers published a Decree (3rdMarch, 2017) regarding surveillance systems and registries. The WHO document is acomprehensive framework of international import that forms a compendium of ethicalprinciples to underlie public health surveillance. Although the Italian Decree is in linewith the guidelines it contains no reference to mechanisms to ensure ethical surveillance,which instead are recommended in the WHO document. Ethics Committees would appearthe most suitable candidates to fill this role.