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Water, a finite natural resource, is vital for the generation, sustenance and flourishing of all life forms. Rampant use and misuse of water make it a depleting natural resource. Consequently, conflicts and stresses have emerged involving the availability, accessibility, and quality of water. The shortage of water has also contributed to the spread of waterborne diseases. The crisis of availability and ac cessibility of quality water and the emergence and prevalence of these waterborne diseases have pushed some groups and individuals to suffer more than others. This disparate impact has contributed to inequities-especially health inequities-by failing to prevent the avoidable impacts of water shortage and waterborne disease on the health of individuals and groups. Considering this fact, the central argument of this paper is that water-related inequities are actually inequities caused at the level of health capabilities of groups and individuals. To address such inequities, this paper suggests that there is a need for a new foundation of water ethics because the existing frameworks fail to capture and address water-related inequities that are caused at the level of health capabilities. With a focus on India, this paper then argues that the new water ethics can be founded on Jennifer Prah Ruger's social justice theory of the 'Health Capability Paradigm (HCP)'. This paper then identifies and recommends some desirable changes to be made in the implementation of Indian water policy.

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This paper argues that Zika virus infection has its ethical implications beyond the reproductive health of women. It claims that Zika virus infection like public health emergency exposes the underlying health determinants and health status of women. Therefore, ethical mitigation of Zika like public health emergencies should consider these underlying health determinants and health status of women. For, undermining and overlooking these underlying determinants and health status of women, during the public health emergencies, enhance the health inequities. The recent Zika virus infection in Brazil has triggered different ethics consultation and has prompted to outline ethical recommendations. However, the recommendations have either focused on the reproductive health of women or on the core strategies of public health emergency. Considering this as a gap in perspective to prepare for Zika like public health emergencies, this paper argues that it is the underlying holistic health of women, precisely, health capability, which should be given due ethical consideration. Finally, the paper concludes highlighting the fact that focusing on the holistic health of the women during Zika like public health emergencies and beyond can bring in long-term benefits for global health equity.

With its origin in the Hippocrates Oath (5th-3rd Century BC), The Nuremberg Codes (1947), and The Declaration of Helsinki (1964), medical ethics set the rules of the professional conducts for the physicians and other medical specialists. It amounts to the deployment of bioethical concepts, values (Autonomy, Non-maleficence, Beneficence, and Justice) and methods within medical set up to suggest the day-to-day decision-making procedures by combining theory and practice. It is a multidisciplinary study as it seeks to develop a set of guidelines for moral decision-making utilizing the resources of not only medicine and biology, but also of law, philosophy, theology, and the social sciences. As the branch of Bioethics, it investigates the complex ethical problems which arise for human life and society from sophisticated medical-technological usages and biological practices. The problems specifically include the nature and distribution of treatment and medical resources, the informed consent and authority of the patient, the physician and others involved in the medical practices, the scope and limits of confidentiality, the limits of acceptable intervention and experimentation, and the propriety of research involving humans and their applications. It also deals with the questions of moral dimensions and professional responsibilities involving all forms of ‘life-related’ issues such as research involving foetal tissues, withdrawal of life-sustaining medical treatment, issues over death, prenatal diagnosis and abortion, the storage of frozen embryos. Medical ethics is intricately linked to the culture and glocal values. To emphasise such aspect, the following papers come together to enrich this volume.