Côte d'Ivoire Ethics Capacity Building Initiative (CECaBI)

Côte d'Ivoire is located in West Africa. It neighbours Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana, among others, with a population of 25 million people. It has a life expectancy at birth of 42 for males and 47 for females. Infant mortality is estimated at 118 of 1000 live births. According to WHO, Côte d'Ivoire has the 27th-highest maternal mortality rate and the 19th-highest HIV/AIDs rate among adults in the world. Furthermore, its proximity to Guinea and Liberia, which are among the countries that were worst hit by the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola Virus outbreak, make it vulnerable to disease outbreak. Despite this context, Côte d’Ivoire devotes only 0.13% of GDP to Research Innovation and Development (RID). This RID investment has been linked to a myriad of challenges, including inadequate scientific equipment, fragmentation of research organisations and a failure to exploit and protect research results. For example, despite 63.8% of the 2012â€"2015 National Development Plan being devoted to wealth creation and social equity, only 1.2% was allocated to scientific research. This has implications not only on the quality of health research, but on the overall ethics governance and regulatory practices in the country. The national research ethics committee was established in 2001 to advise the MOH on how to promote the protection of the dignity and rights of research participants and assess the ethical considerations of studies before they are implemented. Although Côte d’Ivoire’s research ethics and regulation remains fragile, under-developed and fragmented, it has received limited support for capacitating its national ethics and regulatory practices. The Côte d’Ivoire Ethics Building Initiative (CECaBI) is a consortium of different partners who plan to work together to transform the ethics and regulatory practices in the country by undertaking the following objectives: Undertake a comprehensive needs assessment and benchmarking to identify specific areas of improvement Establish a vibrant research ethics committee secretariat and virtual research ethics committee administrator support Develop an ethics governance framework for institutional REC Provide advanced research ethics training and protection of human research participants Build participants knowledge and skills in Good Clinical Practice and monitoring of approved clinical trials Digitalise REC operations Conduct clinical trials meta-analysis through HRWeb.