Ethical medical prescription in a very poor country

Abstract

This paper pretends to draw a brief review upon the ethical aspects of a prescription at a "micro" level, that is of the therapeutic relationship based on the Georgetown "theory of principles" and on the technical aspects of a correct prescription according to the lex artis, sustained on the so-called "evidence based medicine" and on the WHO's requests and publications.

It then turns to the subject of the medical prescription as a problem of Public Health. It stops at its social impact and at the undue pressures that doctors must suffer in order to prescribe, especially those coming from the pharmaceutical industry.

It also offers a juridical framework focused on the Human Rights' International Law. Universal access to medication should be reached -understood as a social good of fundamental importance- in order to attain the Right to Sanitary Assistance. Several ethical justifications that hold up this right are taken into account, especially Rawls' theory of justice