Building Institutional Capacities in Health Research Ethics in Africa
This is a new project at AMANET funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aimed at strengthening Health Research Ethics (HRE) capacity in Africa. The project aims at ensuring that as the African populations are recruited into health research projects, the protection of their welfare and interests is enhanced. The HRE project has three parts: building Health Research Ethics capacity, online Health Research Ethics discussion forum and Ask the Expert/Ethicist.
The HRE capacity building project focuses on training Ethics Committee members on Research Ethics in order to improve the ethical review process of committees that are mandated to safeguard the welfare of research participants. In order to concentrate on activities that have greater potential to strengthen the Ethics Committees, a baseline survey was conducted to identify area of weakness that need to be addressed. A cohort of 21 Ethics Committees is being enrolled in this project and will be involved in various activities aimed at addressing areas of weakness in the review process. These committees are being provided with a sub-grant to support infrastructure and administration at their committees.
Overall, activities are spread over a period of three years, and they include, besides capacity strengthening and infrastructure support, a series of eight Research Ethics training workshops, two of which will be in French (for the benefit of the participating Francophone countries). Through the workshops, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) will be developed/improved, and an additional workshop focussing on harmonization of SOPs will be organised. In addition, a workshop on Research Ethics will be organised specifically for investigators.
It is envisaged that overall the HRE capacity building programme will contribute towards the establishment of competent and independent Ethics Committees that have well-equipped offices, functional and harmonised SOPs, electronic databases and archiving systems, and trained members who network and interact through online discussion forum and workshops.
Read more about this topic: African Malaria Network Trust
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