Individual Privacy Rights and Collective Healthcare in Society

This essay critically examines the intricate relationship between individual privacy rights and the collective right to healthcare, particularly within healthcare facilities. It begins by addressing the common misconceptions surrounding privacy, emphasizing its collective benefits for a coherent society, rather than solely an individual right. The essay then explores the role of surveillance in a democratic society, highlighting its importance in upholding human rights, including freedom of expression and access to healthcare. It further delves into the debate between viewing healthcare as an individual privilege versus a collective right, advocating for the integration of individual rights with structural policy changes to expand healthcare access. The essay discusses how UN bodies utilize individual data for planning and mapping health services, especially for vulnerable populations. It also examines the challenges of balancing individual privacy with public health interventions, such as immunizations and the treatment of infectious diseases. The essay concludes by considering ethical and security issues related to disease outbreaks and the role of developed nations in assisting developing countries with medical resources, underlining the importance of collective good exceeding individual privacy in certain circumstances. The essay is supported by a comprehensive bibliography.

INDIVIDUAL PRIVACY AND COLLECTIVE RIGHT TO HEALTHCARE
Name of the student:
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This essay critically analyses the importance of m maintaining balance between
individual privacy rights and collective right to security as pertain to health care facilities.
Most of the people have fundamental misconception about the nature as well as core
importance of privacy1. The misunderstanding becomes more complicated when they do not
understand that there is a far more effect of privacy on the recent society. This is the reason
why the authorities of the developed countries like the UK, US re undertaking a kind of
universal surveillance.
Privacy is often misinterpreted to be purely an individual’s right which is sometimes
misconstrued as anti-community right which implores an individual to hide from the society.
In this view, there will be a transparent society where none of the people will have any
privacy in their lives. However, in reality privacy has a collective benefit that supports
coherent societies2. According to critics, privacy is not only hiding something or having
control over the life but the more controlled people the society has, the more positively and
freely they behave. Therefore, privacy has a vital function for maintaining balance in the
society, not creating division between society and individual.
As most of the people in the free society believes that privacy act against the
collective right, the concept of surveillance has also been misunderstood. Ina democratic
1 Dove, Edward S. "Privacy and Healthcare Data: Choice of Control to Choice and Control."
(2017): 158.
2 Lindblad, S., S. Ernestam, A. D. Van Citters, C. Lind, T. S. Morgan, and E. C. Nelson.
"Creating a culture of health: evolving healthcare systems and patient engagement." QJM: An
International Journal of Medicine 110, no. 3 (2017): 125-129.
1

society, surveillance has a crucial role to play3. It has vital role in maintaining the human
rights terms, which ultimately controls the aspects of fundamental rights for instance,
freedom of expression, association and availing other necessities such as health care.
There has been an open debate on the status of health care in many democratic
countries. Some people grant this facility to be individual privilege, on the other hand some
assume this to be a collective right. However, integration of the individual rights with the
structural policy changes can expand the scope for all encompassing privilege. Both the rights
and the global health must be first transcending the individual versus collective division then
unite them so that it can provide the best facilities for the individuals along with the whole
population at large4. The traditional liberal theories of human rights support highest attainable
levels of health facilities and restricting these rights for survive the individual perspective
will prevent the advancement of planning, founding new public policies, monitoring,
accountability and the proper assessment5. This is the reason, many UN human rights bodies
seek information from the state parties so that they can utilise individuals’ data for planning
3 Burton, Paul R., Madeleine J. Murtagh, Andy Boyd, James B. Williams, Edward S. Dove,
Susan E. Wallace, Anne-Marie Tasse et al. "Data Safe Havens in health research and
healthcare." Bioinformatics 31, no. 20 (2015): 3241-3248.
4 Lindblad, S., S. Ernestam, A. D. Van Citters, C. Lind, T. S. Morgan, and E. C. Nelson.
"Creating a culture of health: evolving healthcare systems and patient engagement." QJM: An
International Journal of Medicine 110, no. 3 (2017): 125-129.
5 Li, He, Jing Wu, Yiwen Gao, and Yao Shi. "Examining individuals’ adoption of healthcare
wearable devices: An empirical study from privacy calculus perspective." International
journal of medical informatics 88 (2016): 8-17.
2

and mapping access to the health services for serving collective perspective. By using
individual’s information, the UN bodies aim to serve the most vulnerable populations and
implement respective policies for realisation of right to avail health care facilities. In addition
to this, collective perspectives on the right to avail health care facilities, have proved to be
potential for managing the non-communicable diseases. These are done by raising awareness
about the healthier lifestyles, caring for the people in need and formulating particular plans
for preventing such diseases. This however includes the government’s obligation under
international regulations for preventing violations.
The individualistic perspective place primary importance on the privacy, liberty as
well as informed consent for the individual persons. In the public health interventions, there
are issues such as immunisation often infringe on the rights of the individuals. This however,
faces challenge in protecting the privacy of the individuals. Hence, the proper treatment to
control of the infectious diseases cannot be possible as these are highly stigmatised by the
individuals in terms of religion6. In treating dangerous sexually-transmitted diseases like
HIV/AIDS, the health care agencies cannot access names and personal details due to the
individual privacy issues. The concept of Nonmaleficence is not to do any harm to the
individuals. In some cases, the compulsory vaccination adversely affects the health of the
individuals. Hence the authorities compensate them aiming to protect the welfare of public in
broader sense7.
6 Burton, Paul R., Madeleine J. Murtagh, Andy Boyd, James B. Williams, Edward S. Dove,
Susan E. Wallace, Anne-Marie Tasse et al. "Data Safe Havens in health research and
healthcare." Bioinformatics 31, no. 20 (2015): 3241-3248.
7 Dau-Schmidt, Kenneth G., Matt Finkin, and Robert Covington. Legal protection for the
individual employee. West Academic, 2016.
3

Collective right to health is promoted by the idea of social justice which asks for
encouraging access to avail basic health facilities. In such cases the authorities provide free
vaccinations and other cares to one particular social group in order to maintain balance in the
society. However, with such actions, the agencies are narrowing down the unjust inequalities
among the social classes. This kind of problems can be seen only in the individualistic
societies. In the group oriented cultures, the health agencies take more initiatives to curb the
intention of maintaining privacy by the individuals8. To prevent harm from occurring to
others, the methods of isolation, compulsory treatment and quarantine are applied by
violating cultural and religious beliefs. Sometimes. The healthcare practitioners or the state
governments often use the method of paternalism were they can take actions to protect the
health as well as welfare of the people even against their will. Sometimes the individuals,
suffer from immaturity, ignorance, cognitive disability by holding false beliefs regarding the
methods of treatments. In such cases, the efforts are taken through persuasion or compulsion.
Hence it is quite logical to infringe personal privacy for greater good.
In discussing the issue of individual privacy rights over the collective society, one can
have referred to the violation of justice across nations where the developed and rich countries
are disturbing the individual privacy of the under-developed or developing countries by
extracting information of the types of diseases causing epidemic. However, there are both
ethical issues as well as issues associated with the security of lives of the people across the
globe9. Outbreaks of infectious diseases resulted into epidemics which can cross national
8 Lindblad, S., S. Ernestam, A. D. Van Citters, C. Lind, T. S. Morgan, and E. C. Nelson.
"Creating a culture of health: evolving healthcare systems and patient engagement." QJM: An
International Journal of Medicine 110, no. 3 (2017): 125-129.
9 Dove, Edward S. "Privacy and Healthcare Data: Choice of Control to Choice and Control."
(2017): 158.
4

borders quickly through illegal immigration, mass tourism, visits and refugees. Though these
methods, highly infectious diseases extend their range globally. This is the reason why the
developed nations are assisting the developing countries by means of providing various
medical facilities, lifesaving drugs and vaccines so that collective good can exceed the limits
of individual privacy.
5

Bibliography:
Burton, Paul R., Madeleine J. Murtagh, Andy Boyd, James B. Williams, Edward S. Dove,
Susan E. Wallace, Anne-Marie Tasse et al. "Data Safe Havens in health research and
healthcare." Bioinformatics 31, no. 20 (2015): 3241-3248.
Dau-Schmidt, Kenneth G., Matt Finkin, and Robert Covington. Legal protection for the
individual employee. West Academic, 2016.
Dove, Edward S. "Privacy and Healthcare Data: Choice of Control to Choice and Control."
(2017): 158.
Li, He, Jing Wu, Yiwen Gao, and Yao Shi. "Examining individuals’ adoption of healthcare
wearable devices: An empirical study from privacy calculus perspective." International
journal of medical informatics 88 (2016): 8-17.
Lindblad, S., S. Ernestam, A. D. Van Citters, C. Lind, T. S. Morgan, and E. C. Nelson.
"Creating a culture of health: evolving healthcare systems and patient engagement." QJM: An
International Journal of Medicine 110, no. 3 (2017): 125-129.
6