A TALE OF BIOETHICS IN TWO CITIES

A big black hole – that was what bioethics seemed like to me. You sent in a research protocol for review to an ethics review committee. You waited with bated breath. You did not know when you would get a response or what it would look like. You dared not ask questions of the secretariat or the chairperson. It was all “hush hush.” And their word was final, even if it looked like the questions asked did not seem related to the protocol you had submitted. Like a big black hole, if you dared to stick your hand into it, you might be bitten and would not even know what had bitten you.

My frustration as a medical researcher sent me down a path of trying to understand bioethics. Why was bioethics important and how could systems that were critical to the conduct  of  research  be  responsive  to  the  needs  of researchers in Kenya? After four failed admission attempts for “administrative and other reasons” I finally got into the University of Cape Town’s ‘IRENSA” NIH Fogarty-funded Diploma in Research Ethics. Completion allowed me to “sit at the table” and initiate discussions on improving systems at my institute KEMRI. But that was not adequate to quench my thirst for bioethics training. I needed more.

I started seeking a Master’s level training. Unfortunately, most programs required a one-year full residential stay in the country in which the university was based. No training programs were available in Kenya. The Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Culture was the only institute that offered Master’s level education in a blended format. This was a perfect fit for me as I had significant administrative responsibilities as the Deputy Director at my institute.

I decided to apply, unaware that until then their training had been focused entirely on Pakistan. Fortunately, I passed the stringent preliminary examinations required and was subsequently accepted as the first non-national scholar in the Master’s program. After two years of intensive learning and empirical research, I realized that there still remained a gap in capacity building in Kenya. The CBEC program with its alternate year intake and the limited number of trainee slots for international scholars was not going to be able to water the desert sufficiently to yield adequate harvest from the Kenyan soil.

An idea of a partnership between KEMRI and CBEC took root and was pruned over a couple of attempts to yield fruit as a successful NIH grant award: The CBEC KEMRI Bioethics Training Initiative (CK-BTI). This has resulted in over 700 trainees from a variety of backgrounds trained in various certificate courses designed to improve knowledge of research ethics committee members, researchers, clinicians and other healthcare-related professionals.

Two Kenyan universities are currently approved to offer Master’s in Bioethics and the CK-BTI continues to build capacity by providing pedagogy training for the faculty at the two universities. Through this, we hope that we will continue to water the ever-growing tree of bioethics in Kenya by fueling it with innovations in teaching and education.