The synergistic implications of COVID-19, public health and environmental ethics in Kenya

Abstract

COVID-19 is a global pandemic that has unmasked the underlying and once-ignored challenges in public health, especially in Africa. The  pandemic has adversely disrupted people’s lives where systemic and structural inequalities have taken root owing to the interaction  among religious, political, economic, socio-cultural, environmental and other influential factors, resulting in adverse outcomes. These  interactions affected not only the psychological, physical, emotional and social wellbeing of all humanity but also their ethical way of  thinking. Adherence to the local government ministry of health’s stringent measures, such as voluntary self-quarantine or forced  quarantine, may be unattainable. This raises several ethical issues that are not new but which become intensified in pressing situations.  Ethically, legitimate public health measures and conservative environmental efforts are easier to voluntarily comply with than being  enforced. In this article, a phenomenological methodology was employed to not only debunk the ethical difficulties in adhering to the  pandemic’s preventive protocols, but also to reason on the entwinement between the public health and environmental concerns. The  article foregrounded that the COVID-19 pandemic is both a healthcare crisis and an environmental ethics challenge. In focussing on how  systemic and structural inequalities influence social life, the article argued that public health ethics informs environmental conservation  towards a more holistic approach to health and wealth that flows from environmental health ethics. 

Contribution: The article advanced  ongoing discussions on environmental health ethics. Environmental health ethics is a transdisciplinary and integrated approach that  upholds sustainable balance and optimisation of the health of people, animals and ecosystems. A sensitisation and realisation of our  inter-webbed relatedness to all, is a major step towards sustainable health and wealth.