As part of it core mandate to direct and disseminate research in the country, the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), has on Monday disseminated a research findings on the compliance of Health Research Ethics Committees (HRECs) in Nigeria to National and International ethical standards.

The research findings which was disseminated at a Workshop in Lagos was geared towards evaluating the performance of the HRECs in Nigeria as per their mandate to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects in research and to promote the general welfare of the society in the conduct of health research, as well as to scrutinize scientific methods to ensure the highest quality research.

The title of the Research Findings is “Evaluation of Functionality of In Country Institutional Review Board (IRBs) in Compliance with National and International Standards.”

According to the Director General, NIMR, Prof. Innocent Ujah, “Out of the 79 institutions questionnaires were sent out to, only 24 responded, and this by every standard is a failure, particularly in medicine because the pass mark is 50 per cent.”

He said, “Despite the need to do some sampling, we decided to focus on the six geo political zones so that no zone is left out, but to out amazement, many of the zones and institutions did not respond appropriately and this takes us back to the situation where research in Nigeria as a whole is not taken seriously.”

Ujah told The Guardian, research is not being taken as a priority and there are two things to it, either the policy makers are not aware of the value of research, and because they are not aware, funding is very poor to say the least.

He noted in his address; basically, ethics in health research have been in existence in the country for a very long time, but the practice of these ethics have been tricking.

“So it was only appropriate for us to find out how far we have registered institutions that carry out research with any form of standard committees” and to know whether they train their people in this area.

The NIMR boss expressed regrets saying; unfortunately, it was found out that, the HRECs are not very much conversant with the ethics of health research.

He further said, NIMR never took this seriously in the early years, but there have been series of challenges to the extent of litigation and we as an institution that is primarily responsible for health research in Nigeria, deemed it right to propagate and advocate for effective research ethics.

Ujah, who was also the chief host explained our correspondent, the fact that 24 out of 79 institutions responded to the research was another research question, because NIMR needs to ascertain why the rest did not respond.

Speaking with the Deputy Director of Research, NIMR, Dr. Rosemary Audu, she disclosed that, of the 24 that responded, the highest respondents came from the North Central followed by North West and then the South East unfortunately was the worse.

She identified non-compliance of national and international standards by the various HRECs as the major challenge and worse of all, we had no institute that had completely all the requirements, she stressed.

Audu told our correspondent that, “the outcome was not encouraging from our own end.”

She also reiterated that it was found out that research is not a priority in Nigeria, probably because they do not see the direct benefit of it.

The essence of ethics is to protect the research subjects, so that they are not abused, she said.

As the deputy director of research, she revealed that NIMR is presently not undertaking any research towards the outbreak of the Lassa fever, but plans to do so in the near future.

Audu who is also the principal researcher lamented; perhaps because they are no direct incentives for these committees’ members, it is possible why they did not respond, therefore we should find ways of giving incentives to those who responded, as a form of encouragement.

She however noted; majority of the institution that responded have been in existence for 10 years and above.

The research leader stressed while presenting her findings that; “while HRECs are required to have policies and procedures that comply with national and international guidelines, National Health Research Ethics Committees (NHRECs) is for regulation of health research and enforcing the guidelines as well as monitoring the conduct of health research within institution in Nigeria.”

But we found out that substantial differences exists between the functionalities of HRECs documented in literature, and that is to say majority of the HRECs are not fully in compliance with national and international standards, and means the direct function of NHREC is not fully implemented, she added.

Also present at the workshop was DR Ezechukwu, who pointed out in his welcome address that it is rather unfortunate, in this environment, these essential, ethical requirements are not often complied with.
Ezechukwu, who represented, Chairman, NIMR, Institutional Review Board (IRB), Prof. Friday Okonufa, also said, it is also very important that procedures are upheld to allow for any identification and correction of problems or challenges.

And that is why NIMR, IRB sort and obtained funding from Fort Foundation to conduct this research to see how the registered Ethics Committee in the country comply with standards.