Ethics committee meeting by video-conferencing during Covid-19

Agrawal, Vinita; Nath, Chandishwar; Mishra, Saroj Kanta

doi:10.20529/ijme.2020.062

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Maintaining the primacy of human rights and dignity in these situations can be challenging. Documented ethical issues in conducting research during PHEs include preparing RECs for accelerated review of studies, for instance through the establishment of ad hoc committees [3,6,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]; ensuring appropriate research designs for scientific validity, social value and fair selection of participants [31]; promoting inclusive and adequate stakeholder engagement and informed consent processes [2,[32][33][34]; dealing with the specific ethical conundrum of clinical trials and human challenge studies during emergencies [35][36][37][38][39][40][41]; supporting appropriate data collection, storage and future use, including those relating to children [33,[42][43][44][45]; and maintaining mechanisms for ethics review whether in person or virtual [40,[46][47][48][49][50][51]. However, few studies specifically consider ethics review processes, procedures and governance frameworks for epidemics and public health emergencies in Africa [52].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A scoping review of ethics review processes during public health emergencies in Africa

Orievulu,

Hinga,

Nkosi

et al. 2024

BMC Med Ethics

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Background The COVID-19 pandemic forced governments, multilateral public health organisations and research institutions to undertake research quickly to inform their responses to the pandemic. Most COVID-19-related studies required swift approval, creating ethical and practical challenges for regulatory authorities and researchers. In this paper, we examine the landscape of ethics review processes in Africa during public health emergencies (PHEs). Methods We searched four electronic databases (Web of Science, PUBMED, MEDLINE Complete, and CINAHL) to identify articles describing ethics review processes during public health emergencies and/or pandemics. We selected and reviewed those articles that were focused on Africa. We charted the data from the retrieved articles including the authors and year of publication, title, country and disease(s) reference, broad areas of (ethical) consideration, paper type, and approach. Results Of an initial 4536 records retrieved, we screened the titles and abstracts of 1491 articles, and identified 72 articles for full review. Nine articles were selected for inclusion. Of these nine articles, five referenced West African countries including Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, and experiences linked to the Ebola virus disease. Two articles focused on South Africa and Kenya, while the other two articles discussed more general experiences and pitfalls of ethics review during PHEs in Africa more broadly. We found no articles published on ethics review processes in Africa before the 2014 Ebola outbreak, and only a few before the COVID-19 outbreak. Although guidelines on protocol review and approval processes for PHEs were more frequently discussed after the 2014 Ebola outbreak, these did not focus on Africa specifically. Conclusions There is a gap in the literature about ethics review processes and preparedness within Africa during PHEs. This paper underscores the importance of these processes to inform practices that facilitate timely, context-relevant research that adequately recognises and reinforces human dignity within the quest to advance scientific knowledge about diseases. This is important to improve fast responses to PHEs, reduce mortality and morbidity, and enhance the quality of care before, during, and after pandemics.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A scoping review of ethics review processes during public health emergencies in Africa

Orievulu,

Hinga,

Nkosi

et al. 2024

BMC Med Ethics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Pandemic and epidemic contexts raise many complex and di cult dilemmas related to advancing scienti c inquiry while maintaining the primacy of human rights and dignity. Documented ethical issues in conducting research during PHEs include preparing RECs for accelerated review of studies, for instance through the establishment of ad hoc committees (3,(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19); ensuring appropriate research designs for scienti c validity, social value and fair selection of participants (20); promoting inclusive and adequate stakeholder engagement and informed consent processes (2,(21)(22)(23); dealing with speci c ethical conundrum of clinical trials and human challenge studies during emergencies (24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30); supporting appropriate data collection, storage and future use, including those relating to children (22,(31)(32)(33)(34); and maintaining mechanisms for ethics review, sometimes virtual, during PHEs (29,(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40). However, few studies speci cally consider ethics review systems, processes, procedures and governance frameworks for epidemics and public health emergencies in Africa (41).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A scoping review of the landscape of ethics review processes during public health emergencies in sub-Saharan Africa

Orievulu,

Hinga,

Nkosi

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic forced governments, multilateral public health organisations and (academic) research institutions to undertake research quickly to inform their responses to the pandemic. Most COVID-19-related studies required swift ethical approval, creating ethical and practical challenges for both regulatory authorities and researchers. In this paper, we look at the landscape of ethics review processes in Africa during the public health emergencies (PHEs). Methods: We searched four electronic databases (Web of Science, PUBMED, MEDLINE Complete, and CINAHL) to identify articles describing ethics review processes during public health emergencies and/or pandemics. We reviewed the retrieved articles, excluding articles that were not focused on Africa. We charted the data from the retrieved articles including the authors and year of publication, title, country and disease(s) reference, broad areas of (ethical) consideration, paper type, and approach. Results: Of an initial 4536 entries, we screened the titles and abstracts of 1491 articles, and identified 72 articles for full review. Nine articles were selected for inclusion. Of these nine articles, five referenced West African countries such as Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone and experiences linked to the Ebola virus disease. Two articles were centred on South Africa and Kenya, while the other two articles referenced Africa within more general discussions on experiences and pitfalls of ethics review during PHEs. We found that very few articles captured, or reported on, ethics review processes in Africa (including before the emergence of COVID-19). Guidelines on protocol review and approval processes for PHE were more frequently discussed after the 2014 Ebola outbreak, but these did not focus on Africa specifically. Conclusions: There is a gap in the literature about ethics review processes and preparedness within Africa during PHEs. This paper underscores the importance of these processes to inform practices that facilitate timely, context-relevant research that adequately recognises and reinforces human dignity within the quest to advance scientific knowledge about diseases.

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“…Manpower is affected by a substantial amount, offline meetings are converted into online ones with its own challenges, but it surely has facilitated the accelerated review process which was necessary during the pandemic. [ 4 ]…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of the COVID pandemic on functioning of the institutional ethics committee: A comparison study

Shetty,

Thatte,

Pal

et al. 2023

Perspectives in Clinical Research

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Purpose and Aim: In COVID 19 pandemic, it was essential to document the functioning of the institutional ethics committee (IEC), how the organization adapted and faced challenges posed, thus forming the rationale behind this particular audit. The objectives were to assess the impact of the pandemic on the structure, review process, outcomes, and administration of IEC and to compare the same during its functioning in the prepandemic stage. Subject and Methods: The study was conducted as a retrospective audit. After exemption from ethics review, the data were collected from the IEC office situated in KEM Hospital and were segregated into four domains: structure, review process, outcomes, and administration. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Mann–Whitney U-test was used to compare the turnover time for approval of projects between the two study periods at 5% level of significance. SPSS software version 22 was used to analyze the data. Results: Constitution changed, more protocols pertaining to COVID 19 studies were reviewed, meetings frequency doubled, and Standard Operating Procedures was amended to incorporate the changes faced during pandemic. Significant decrease in turnover time was noticed with respect to submission to query letter and study completion. There were more protocol deviations. Financial burden and expenditure decreased due to less paperwork and meetings being held online. Conclusion The ethics committee infrastructure and functioning had to undergo a paradigm shift to adapt to the various changes and overcome the various hurdles occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Ethics committee meeting by video-conferencing during Covid-19

Cited by 7 publications

References 3 publications

A scoping review of ethics review processes during public health emergencies in Africa

A scoping review of ethics review processes during public health emergencies in Africa

A scoping review of the landscape of ethics review processes during public health emergencies in sub-Saharan Africa

Impact of the COVID pandemic on functioning of the institutional ethics committee: A comparison study

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