Life Support Machines Ethics on Life-Threatening Patients in East Africa

Abstract

In the current millennia characterized by unprecedented technological advancements in the healthcare industry, life and health significantly rely on the efficacy of machines. When vital body organs such as the kidneys, lungs, or heart failure; death usually is very imminent. Sometime medical personnel sort to use life support machines such as mechanical ventilator for temporal breathing or cardiopulmonary resuscitation for temporal blood circulation in order to provide either short-term or urgent prolonged life to the acutely ill patient. Some patients manage to recover but sometimes there is no hope of recovery thus the life support machines only prolong the inevitable dying process of the patient. This research shall look at the ethics regarding the use of life support machines to prolong the life of a critically ill patient with no hope of recovering. This topic was selected due to an ethical dilemma belong two schools of thought: one argues that it is morally unjust to let a patient die purposively while the others contend that it is ethically wrong to prolong the suffering of an acutely ill patient with no hopes of recovery without their consent. The first question posed for the study shall be: Is it ethical for healthcare facilities and personnel to use life support machines to prolong the life of critically ill patients with no chances of recovery? The question is pertinent to the use of the devices and bridging the gaps between the two schools of thought about life support machines. The second question shall be: When should a critically ill patient with no hopes of recovery be allowed to die? Patients under intensive care units often are not able to talk and state their stands about their health thus the decision remains to the medical personnel, family and the interpretation of the law. More often than the decisions made are very contradictory; therefore, the question shall help to find a common understanding of the research problem.