Vaccines are responsible for many global public health successes, such as the eradication of smallpox and important reductions in other serious infections like polio and measles. Even so, vaccinations have also long been the subject of various ethical arguments. The key ethical debates related to vaccine regulation, development, and use generally revolve. “A discussion of the ethics of vaccine rationing leads to a review of suffering due to pneumonia, particularly in the elderly” (Zimmerman, 2007).
Rationing of scarce vaccine supplies will likely be required when the next pandemic occurs, raising the questions about how to ration and upon what principles. Because, influenza pandemics have differing mortality patterns occur. Vaccine manufacturers and essential healthcare workers can be justified with either principle. Therefore, the unequal principles of choosing based on social worth or those in whom vaccination is most likely to medically succeed raise substantial justice issues. “A healthy person is unlikely to die from the flu and therefore does not need the vaccine as much as a senior, an asthmatic, or others who are at-risk of serious complications” (Ludwig, 2014).
Equal principles of medical neediness and random chance avoid justice concerns and are proposed. A framework that uses multiple principles to address influenza vaccine rationing in light of a shortage is recommended. As the various prioritization models would suggest, there is no single, simple solution for allocating vaccine in a pandemic. Advance planning is further complicated by difficulties predicting the likelihood and severity of risk. Likewise, people who cannot pay should still be allowed to get the vaccine if they are at-risk. This goes against the principles of free-market economics, which would let anyone buy a vaccine for a high enough price and refuse to give it away for free.
Finally,