Abstract

The fundamental bioethical problems of medical progress, i.e. the gap between new medical technologies on the one hand and the inherited moral code as well as limited economic resources on the other, and of social change and cultural pluralism are even more urgent in Africa than in industrialised nations. Several characteristic conflicts result from these tensions: a superior position ofhealth care professionals without the corresponding checks and balances, the allocation of extremely scarce resources in the public sector and within health care, the relationship between biomedicine and 'traditional' healing, and the difference between individualistic and communalistic ethics, e.g. regarding informed consent