This chapter addresses the ethical dimensions of healthcare services provided to healthcare professionals and disaster victims in disaster situations. Disasters are natural or human-induced events that occur unexpectedly, affect human life, and require external assistance at the national or international level. The health impacts of disasters range from acute illness, distress, and death to long-term consequences such as the worsening of health inequalities and the exacerbation of chronic diseases. In disaster conditions, healthcare professionals are required to make decisions under heavy workloads, limited resources, time pressure, security concerns, uncertainty, and intense emotional burden. These conditions necessitate disaster-specific ethical decision-making processes in addition to ordinary clinical ethics approaches. Therefore, preparedness for disasters is essential, and an ethical management approach that differs from routine circumstances should be developed.

Ethical management in disasters should be grounded in the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, respect for autonomy, justice, human dignity, solidarity, non-discrimination, transparency, and accountability. In disaster risk management, special sensitivity should be shown to groups that are more vulnerable to harm and injustice. Ethical conduct requires international response teams to coordinate with local authorities as much as possible, to ensure adequate preparedness, to plan prudent exit strategies in coordination with local stakeholders, and to support disaster risk management that is attentive to the needs and values of affected communities.

The allocation of limited resources, triage, informed consent, confidentiality, risk communication, protection of vulnerable groups, the obligations of healthcare professionals, and relations with the media are among the prominent ethical issue areas in disaster settings. For an ethically acceptable disaster management process, it is important to develop preparedness plans, provide healthcare professionals with training in ethical decision-making and disaster triage, establish applicable guidelines, create ethics consultation mechanisms, protect the privacy of disaster victims in media coverage, and provide adequate in-service training to improve the ethical competence of healthcare professionals.