Health care providers, must never deviate from respect for the dignity of the person

The Catholic Church reaffirms that in health care respect for the dignity of the person is an absolute value and that not everything that is technically possible is ethically acceptable.

Feb 07, 2017

VATICAN CITY: The Catholic Church reaffirms that in health care respect for the dignity of the person is an absolute value and that not everything that is technically possible is ethically acceptable. This includes euthanasia and aggressive therapy, cloning, and the attempts of gestation of human embryos in animal or artificial wombs, abortion. Instead "deep palliative sedation" in the stages close to the time of death and the respect of the will of the person, which must always be defended, even by promoting access to all medications and technologies for the population of developing countries. These are some of the suggestions offered by the New Charter of health care workers, presented today at the Vatican, along with the XXV World Day of the Sick, which will take place in Lourdes on 11 February.

The latter, recalled Card. Peter Turkson, Prefect of the Congregation for the Integral human development, "instituted by St. John Paul II in 1992 and organized for the first time precisely in Lourdes on 11 February of the following year", has arrived this year to celebrate its 'silver Jubilee'. "Although the last decade has been celebrated solemnly every three years like other World Days, this 25th edition, by the will of the Holy Father will be celebrated in the extraordinary form. The chosen theme is: Amazement at what God does, "he has done great things for me the Almighty ..." (Lk 1:49). "

With regards the first charter, published in 1995, it has been translated into 19 languages ??and for almost twenty years has been the basic text for healthcare professionals”. The New Charter has therefore required several years of work involving a qualified group of experts."

From the doctrinal point of view, continued Msgr. Jean-Marie Mate Musivi Mupendawatu, secretary of the same dicastery, "the New Charter for Health Care Workers reaffirms the sanctity of life and its inviolability as a gift from God. Health workers are ministers of life because they are servants and called to love it and take it in the existential journey of generating life – living it - to death, the thematic triad of the New Charter. "

Gioacchino Antonio a Spagnolo, professor of bioethics and director of the Institute of Bioethics and Medical Humanities at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome, explained that the charter takes into account the scientific achievements and subsequent magisterial pronouncements from 1994 on, keeping its original structure "as a tool for serious ethical preparation and continuing education for health Care Workers".

The patient appeals to the "science and conscience" of the doctor

Addressed to those working in the biomedical field - health personnel, but also biologists, pharmacists, lawmakers on health care, etc. - It states that "all these operators carry out their daily practice in an interpersonal relationship, spurred on by the confidence of a person marked by suffering and illness, which resorts to science and to the conscience of a healthcare provider that they meet to assist and cure them. The Charter seeks to support the health care worker fidelity to ethics in the choices and behaviors in which they embody service to life, and this fidelity is outlined in following the stages of human existence: to create, live, die, as moments of ethical and pastoral reflection".--Asia News

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