Fair Access to Covid-19 Treatment in Mexico

Thinking Out Loud: leading philosophers discuss topical global issues

Philosopher César Palacios-González talks about how corruption and racism in Mexico created serious hurdles for developing federal guidelines for deciding who gets to access scarce medical resources. In Mexico, widespread corruption and racism create extra challenges for tackling the coronavirus pandemic: how can one prevent that affluent people buy their way into ICU or that people from certain ethnic groups are given priority acces to treatment? How can one prevent that the perceived social value of patients (e.g. the fact that they have children, are prisoners, have 'good' jobs...) determines whether they get treatment? Philosopher César Palacios-González (University of Oxford) talks about how these challenges affected the development of the federal guidelines for who gets to access scarce medical resources.