Bioethics, Human Rights and Health Law

The book is intended to be an introductory guide for healthcare practitioners, legal practitioners, healthcare students and law students who are concerned with the delivery of healthcare services in South Africa. The book emphasises the ethical and legal aspects of healthcare in the country while making references to international human rights and ethical standards applicable to healthcare services. As the book is a guide, it does not deal exhaustively with the topics discussed. Instead it aims to give healthcare and legal practitioners some general guidelines.

New edition update:

- an updated ethics chapter that includes a robust section on African indigenous values in the context of health care.

- a chapter on universal health care coverage and the NHI.

- the legislation need to be reviewed and updated.

- a section on alternate dispute resolution.

- the section on research also requires updating.

- the case studies also need to be made more recent to include current contextually relevant issues like the Life Esidimeni Tragedy.

Table of contents:

Part 1: Introduction to Bioethics, Human Rights and Health Law: Principles and Practice - Background

Chapter 1 Ethical concepts, theories and principles and their application to healthcare

Chapter 2. Codes of healthcare ethics

Chapter 3. Health and human rights

Chapter 4. Health law - the basics

Part 2: Specific Topics

Chapter 5. Professionalism and the healthcare practitioner-patient relationship

Chapter 6. Consent

Chapter 7. Confidentiality

Chapter 8. Medical malpractice and professional negligence

Chapter 9. Reproductive health

Chapter 10. Issues in genetics

Chapter 11. Use of human tissue

Chapter 12. End of life issues

Chapter 13. HIV and AIDS

Chapter 14. Resource allocation

Chapter 15. Business ethics - the healthcare context

Chapter 16. Human health and the environment

Chapter 17. The ethics of research