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Health Policy, Ethics and Human Values - An Islamic Perspective

The Council for International Organizations of Medical Science (CIOMS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have jointly sponsored a series of international conferences under the general title of Health Policy, Ethics and Human Values. The first took place in Athens in 1984; others followed in New Delhi, Noordwijk (Netherlands), and Bangkok; the most recent was in Cairo in 1988, and others will follow. The subject is of great importance, and will become more so in the years ahead. While mankind's capacity for improving the health of the world's people is increasing steadily and often dramatically. the resources available for doing so are, and possibly always will be, in short supply relative to need. Thus, advances in technology raise deeply perplexing issues and decisions about the care of individuals and communities and valueladen questions of resource allocation are ever present.

The CIOMS conferences have helped all of us to appreciate the issues better, and particularly to understand how they are dealt with in different national and cultural settings. Our Muslim colleagues have been interested

and persistent in helping us to work through both the practicalities of conference organization and the ethical complexities of policy questions. When the opportunity arose for a seminar built around an Islamic perspective, CIOMS and WHO were pleased to respond with active collaboration.

The Seminar held in Cairo had two particular advantages. First, it prompted the Islamic Organization for Medical Sciences (IOMS) to encourage leading Muslim ethicists and scholars to give major attention to this particular subject of health policy, ethics and human values. Secondly, it provided an opportunity for a number of leading ethicists and policymakers from other countries, members of the CIOMS steering Committee on the International Dialogue on Health Policy, Ethics and Human Values, to be present and to enter into a dialogue with their Muslim colleagues on these issues, and to plan the next steps in the International Dialogue.

The full proceedings of the Seminar will be published by IOMS. This brief report is intended, not as a summary, but rather as an indication of the kinds of issues that were covered. Because of the sequential nature of these conferences and the evolving agenda of ethical and policy questions, this report begins with a description of the prior experience of CIOMS and WHO in this field, including a recounting of some of the conceptual milestones.                                                                  

The report then provides reflections on the Seminar. The reflections both indicate the content areas which the proceedings will contain and illustrate the nature of the dialogue that took place between the Muslim scholars and their guest ethicists and policymakers.

The Cairo Seminar can be seen as another milestone in the series of the CIOMS/WHO conferences, with the particular significance of calling attention to the substantial potential of Islam as a rich source of religious, cultural and scientific values that have affected and can continue to affect health policies. In this sense, the Islamic context can be seen as a paradigm for the further consideration of health policies, ethics and human values.