HCM-515: Health Law and Ethics
Module 05: Critical Thinking Assignment
Memo for Public Health Emergency (110 points)
For this Memo, research the COVID-19 Pandemic and indicate any international advice provided for mass gatherings during the pandemic.
Imagine you have been asked to draft a memo to help the country to safely proceed with Hajj.
- Indicate the advice provided by the World Health Organization in safely engaging in a mass gathering in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during a pandemic.
- Analyze the ethical implications of this advice.
- Detail how this advice was prescribed into law or practice in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
- Indicate the healthcare organization or other entities that heed this advice; and
- Examine the outcomes of these requirements.
Your memo should meet the following structural requirements:
- Two to three pages in length, not including the cover sheet and reference page.
- Formatted according to APA 7th edition and Saudi Electronic University writing standards.
- Provide support for your statements with in-text citations from a minimum of four scholarly articles. Two of these sources may be from the class readings, textbook, or lectures, but the other two must be external. The Saudi Digital Library is a good place to find these references.
You are strongly encouraged to submit all assignments to the Turnitin Originality Check prior to submitting them to your instructor for grading. If you are unsure how to submit an assignment to the Originality Check tool, review the Turnitin Originality Check Student Guide.
Sample Answer (Preview)
The following is a partial sample answer showing the approach, structure and referencing expected for this brief. It covers approximately 25–30% of the full 2–3 page (about 690-word) memo. Sources are cited in APA 7th edition style.
Memorandum
To: Deputy Minister for Public Health, Ministry of Health
From: Public Health Policy Adviser
Subject: Proceeding safely with Hajj during the COVID-19 pandemic
1. World Health Organization advice on mass gatherings
The World Health Organization (WHO, 2020) advises that any decision to restrict, modify, postpone, cancel or proceed with a mass gathering must rest on a risk assessment tailored to the event. Hajj brings more than 2.5 million pilgrims from over 180 countries together (Jokhdar et al., 2021), so it carries a very high risk of amplifying transmission (Ebrahim & Memish, 2020). The WHO recommends reducing venue capacity, regulating crowd flow, providing hand hygiene facilities and cleaning venues regularly, and postponing or cancelling an event if significant risk remains after these controls (WHO, 2020). These measures should be applied together, because no single control is enough at an event of this size.
2. Ethical implications of the advice
The advice places the duty to protect public health against the religious importance of Hajj and the freedom of pilgrims to perform it. Restricting numbers protects pilgrims, health workers and the countries to which pilgrims return, but it also means that most Muslims who planned to perform Hajj cannot do so. Ahmed and Memish (2020) argue that such decisions must be…
[End of preview] The remaining sections are included in the full solution, which is available on order. They cover the rest of the WHO advice, the ethical implications, how the advice was put into law and practice in Saudi Arabia, the organisations that applied it, the outcomes of Hajj 2020 and the recommendations.
References
Ahmed, Q. A., & Memish, Z. A. (2020). The cancellation of mass gatherings (MGs)? Decision making in the time of COVID-19. Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease, 34, Article 101631. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmaid.2020.101631
Ebrahim, S. H., & Memish, Z. A. (2020). COVID-19 – the role of mass gatherings. Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease, 34, Article 101617. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmaid.2020.101617
Jokhdar, H., Khan, A., Asiri, S., Motair, W., Assiri, A., & Alabdulaali, M. (2021). COVID-19 mitigation plans during Hajj 2020: A success story of zero cases. Health Security, 19(2), 133–139. https://doi.org/10.1089/hs.2020.0144
World Health Organization. (2020). Key planning recommendations for mass gatherings in the context of COVID-19: Interim guidance, 29 May 2020. https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/332235
