The AMANET Health Research Ethics Project is Now in Full Swing
Aceme Nyika
The African Malaria Network Trust, AMANET, was recently awarded a grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aimed at strengthening Health Research Ethics (HRE) capacity in Africa. The high disease burden of African countries, the emergence of new diseases, and efforts to address the10/90 gap as well as to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals have led to an unprecedented increase in health research activities in Africa. The 10/90 gap refers to the fact that about 90% of resources are spent on diseases that affect only about 10% of the global population. 
It should be acknowledged that the development or testing of new disease interventions must be carried out on humans. However, historically some tests have abused study participants, either knowingly or inadvertently. It is therefore important that there are effective checks and balances to ensure the protection of the welfare of participants especially if they are poor and vulnerable and in the context of weak civil protection systems. In light of the generally poor health delivery systems, the lower levels of education, and poverty of communities and governments, it has become imperative that HRE in Africa be strengthened in order to minimise the risk of unethical research being conducted on the poverty-stricken populations.
The AMANET HRE projects aims to ensure that as the African populations are recruited into health research projects, the protection of their welfare and interests is enhanced. There are basically three projects, namely the Health Research Ethics capacity building project, the Health Research Ethics online discussion forum and the Ask the Expert/Ethicist project.
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 will be provided with a grant of over 1M in total (USD 50,000 apiece) to support infrastructure and administration at their committees.
Overall, activities will be 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.
So far two (English version) HRE workshops for members of ethics committee have been organized. We advice those members of ethics committees who have not yet participates to keep tabs with their heads of institutions where calls are being sent. We are also at this point taking the opportunity to inform all research investigators to already register and take the online AMANET course available for free at the www.amanet-trust.org. The second set of 5 HRE workshops starting early next year will be for health research investigators, who will be required to have completed the online HRE course to become eligible. So book your space, take the free online course before it is too late!
The second project is the Health Research Ethics discussion forum. This is an online interactive discussion forum that enables Ethics Committee members across Africa, health researchers, scholars, policy makers, health research participants, and other interested stakeholders to share ideas and views on ethical dilemmas and challenges encountered in the field. Real life case studies will be posted on the online discussion forum comments and views from the audience are posted and compiled online. This project has already started on the AMANET website; we invite you to become one of the early contributors to this useful forum.
The third project is the ‘Ask the Expert/Ethicist’ activity, which is aimed at giving individual participants a channel through which they can ask any questions regarding ethical dilemmas or challenges that they encounter in the field. Responses from the wider audience will be compiled and expert views on the issues under discussion will be given by Experts/Ethicists coordinated from the Yaoundé Sub-hub.
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.
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