THE ETHICAL AND LEGAL IMPERATIVE OF INFECTION PREVENTION AND CONTROL: A FRAMEWORK GROUNDED IN ISLAMIC BIOETHICS
Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) is central to
safeguarding health systems, but in Saudi Arabia it raises
critical questions: is IPC an ethical and legal obligation, or
merely a professional option? Drawing on the Kingdom’s
experiences with MERS-CoV, COVID-19, and the rapid
integration of artificial intelligence (AI) under Vision
2030, this article interrogates IPC through the intersecting
lenses of statutory law, Islamic bioethics, and global health
governance. The analysis identifies three persistent
challenges: (1) weak enforcement of the Personal Data
Protection Law (PDPL) in health data use, (2) unresolved
liability in AI-driven surveillance and decision-making,
and (3) ethical tensions in isolation orders, digital contact
tracing, and vaccination mandates. Islamic principles of
(public interest), (justice), (trust),
and (necessity) are shown to provide a culturally
coherent framework for balancing collective safety with
individual rights. The article makes three key
contributions. First, it demonstrates how Saudi statutory
law operationalizes these ethical commitments but suffers
from enforcement gaps. Second, it highlights the
underexplored legal risks of AI adoption in IPC,
particularly algorithmic bias and liability. Third, it
proposes a governance model integrating ethical oversight
committees, AI-specific regulation, and inclusive
engagement of religious scholars, healthcare professionals, ...
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