Ethical duty, ethics and right to nutritional care

Summary: Nutritional care has recently been recognized as a human right to promote access to optimal and timely nutritional care and help reduce disease related malnutrition. The patient who is endangered or suffering from malnutrition is highly vulnerable and at risk of having their human dignity affected. International declarations (of Vienna and Cartagena) have proposed and recognized nutritional care as an emerging human right, and the ethical duty of the nutrition support professional is to ensure access to it through care, responsibility, and justice. The purpose of this paper is to reflect the ethical implications of care, responsibility, and justice as foundations of ethical duty, the ethical implications of lack of access to nutritional care, and the possible solution in generating ethical awareness and education about nutritional care, based on the Vienna and Cartagena Declaration.