WHO-CBEC

At the request of the World Health Organization (WHO), CBEC organized a two-day workshop to review the “WHO tool for benchmarking ethics oversight of health-related research with human participants.” The document is developed to assess the capacity of ethics governance structures at the institutional and national levels. The aim of the workshop was to determine the feasibility, relevance and validity of this document to the realities of LMICs.

Dr. Palitha Mahipala, WHO Representative (WR) for Pakistan, gave the opening address. Dr. Andreas Reis from WHO Geneva Office joined online to introduce the purpose of the tool. Dr. Ahmed Mandil, WHO-EMR Office, provided regional perspectives via Zoom. Dr. Arshad Altaf from the EMRO in Egypt participated in person for discussion.

Twenty-one participants, with diverse experiences in ethics governance, representing all four provinces of Pakistan, participated. Dr. Obaidullah representing Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP), and Dr. Saima Pervaiz Iqbal chairing Research Ethics Committee of the National Bioethics Committee (NBC-REC), focused on ground realities drawing from their experience of membership in their respective committees.

After reviewing and critiquing the document, participants provided several suggestions. They recommended removal of a clause mandating use of online registries for governance structures at the institutional level due to its impracticality in local context. Another suggestion was that all research proposals should be reviewed irrespective of methodology given the nascent culture of research in many LMICs.

The workshop concluded with a report incorporating participant feedback, which was submitted to WHO Geneva. In a subsequent email, Dr. Reis thanked CBEC and acknowledged that the Pakistani participants “went into great details” providing “entirely new, and excellent suggestions” that will help making the tool “more feasible and practical.”