Structure and Function of Ethics Committee in Bangladesh

Abstract

A cross-sectional study was done on 50 ethics committee members from 15 different Ethics Committee (EC) over a period of 6 months from February 2018 to June 2018 to understand the structure and function of ECs in Bangladesh. Most of the ECs were male predominant (66.3%) and maximum ECs had technical members (93.33%). Only 8.3% ECs had lay person. Forty percent of the ECs did not update SOP routinely. Most of the ECs had no provision of training for its members (79.2%) and had no budget (71.8%) for the purpose of running EC efficiently. Different ECs had different quorum to start the meeting. Maximum ECs service were voluntary (82.22%). A little less than half of the respondents (45.76%) felt that their decision had not been noted down if disagreed against majority of vote in the ECs and did not placed in the minute. Maximum respondents (88.18%) did not know whether there was any law in Bangladesh to create a EC. A big percentage (89%) of ECs did not monitored by authorized body to guide and oversee the functioning of EC. This article concluded that some ECs followed the international rules and regulation to formation and function the ECs but still a handsome number of ECs were lag behind in Bangladesh. The capacity of ECs can only be strengthened by training and various recognition/accreditation programs.

Keywords

• Ethics committee, IRB, ERC, EC Members, Ethics Committee structure, IRB function, IRB member’s knowledge, research ethics, bioethics