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`African ethics review committees are weak`
2007-06-02 10:13:29
By Patrick Kisembo
Majority of ethics review committees in Africa are weak, it has been revealed. Addressing 30 participants from ten African countries in a five day training workshop on Health Research Ethics (HRE), in Dar es Salaam yesterday, the African Malaria Network Trust (AMANET) Managing Trustee, Prof. Wen Kilama said the ethics review committees in Africa were weak and were not operating optimally.
``Our trust is able now to not only train members of ethics review committees, but also train investigators.
This is so because we have also obtained funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which made to assist us in addressing the weaknesses identified in this area,`` said Prof Kilama.
The trust obtained a total of about USD4.1m from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last year for building institutional capacities in health research ethics in Africa.
The AMANET boss emphasised further that health research ethics was still missing in many African and in some European universities curriculars.
He said: ``What has become abundantly clear is that the deteriorating health situation in many African countries, the discovery and attempts at development of many new intervention tools will translate into increased health research undertakings carried out in Africa.``
However Prof. Kilama warned that the envisaged increase in health research is likely to usher in unprecedented exploitation by multinationals and by some unscrupulous guest researchers who have realised that the disease in endemic developing countries present unique opportunities for quick evaluation of the candidate tools.
``This is because our communities are highly endemic for some disease and therefore have a great pool of prospective study participants,`` he noted.
Prof. Kilama insisted: ``Moreover because our people are generally ignorant and poor, they will easily agree to participate in trials as they cannot quite often arrive at autonomous choices.``
He mentioned other factors that can cause African communities to be misused as scarcity of health facilities, which are also poorly distributed, lack of essential services, short of supplies and expert personnel which make people vulnerable and render them accept to participate in studies without being fully informed.
Prof. Kilama said some ethical issues arising in collaborative research, need early attention as there has been pressure on pharmaceutical companies or their representatives to quickly complete and introduce new products on the stock market so as to benefit their shareholders.
He urged participants drawn from Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia to review research protocols so as to ensure protection of research participants in their home countries.
``It is you participants who will ensure that all research done is responsive to the health needs of study communities that the product developed from the research can be made reasonably available after the study,`` he emphasized.
The Chief guest Prof. Brig General Yadon Kohi, Director General for Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology, urged participants to take ethics review committee as an organ responsible for protecting the welfare of the research participant in particular the vulnerable groups such as children, pregnant women, the handicapped and poor communities.
Prof. Brig General Kohi said the review organs must of essence be composed of experts in the field of competence who are conversant in theoretical principles and in the practice of ethics.
``They must be dedicated to be able to carefully deal with the often large volume of proposals in view of the large number of health problems in our society,`` he said.
He urged members of ethics review bodies to update themselves on new development in the health sector to ensure uniformity and transparency in their operation.
Previous similar workshops have been held in Kisumu, Kenya and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2001, in Pretoria, South Africa and Libreville, Gabon in 2002, Sudan and Cameroon in 2003.
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