article · Tanzania journal of health research/Tanzania Journal of Health Research
This narrative review examines the landscape of health research regulation in Africa, highlighting both existing challenges and potential solutions. It draws on a variety of sources, including academic literature and reports from governmental and non-governmental organisations. The study identifies key obstacles such as limited regulatory capacity, insufficient funding, ethical concerns related to artificial intelligence, and a mismatch between research and local needs. To address these issues, the review proposes strengthening capacity building, establishing robust regulatory frameworks, fostering international collaboration, and enhancing community engagement. Ultimately, improving health research regulation is deemed crucial for ensuring ethical conduct, protecting data, and building public trust in research across the continent.
Effective health research regulation is vital for protecting participants, ensuring ethical practices, and building public trust. This research provides a roadmap for African nations to strengthen their regulatory systems, enabling health research to better serve local needs and contribute to the continent's development and well-being.
The abstract does not indicate a direct commercialisation pathway for a product or service. Instead, this research is applied at a policy and governance level, providing insights for policymakers, regulators, researchers, and non-governmental organisations to make informed decisions regarding health research regulation and policy development in African countries.
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Background: Health research regulation in developing countries, including Africa, frequently focusses on developing ethical guidelines to protect research participants, prioritising locally relevant research topics, building research capacity within the country, and navigating challenges such as limited infrastructure and funding, all while ensuring that research is carried out responsibly and does not exploit vulnerable populations. Ethical considerations, Research Ethics Committees (RECs), national health research goals, capacity training, and international collaboration are all essential components of health research governance in developing countries. This article will present a detailed overview of health research regulation in Africa, emphasising challenges and potential perspectives. This will help policymakers and regulators, researchers, and other health research stakeholders, such as non-governmental organisations, better understand the demands for particular policy decisions. Methods: This narrative review paper incorporates data and information from a variety of sources, including academic journals and articles, books, and government and nongovernmental organization reports that are found on Google Scholar, Web of Science, institutional repositories, and gray literature documents. Results: Limited regulatory capacity and frameworks, skilled personnel and capacity building, funding and investment concerns, ethical concerns with the emergence of artificial intelligence, enforcement challenges in low-resource settings, research mismatch with local needs, and research culture were identified as the key challenges facing health research regulation in Africa. It is proposed that African countries boost capacity building, establish regulatory frameworks, collaborate internationally, interact with their communities, and prioritise their research requirements. Conclusions: Improving health research regulation in Africa is critical to ensure ethical behaviour, data protection, and public trust in research. This necessitates improving national research governance, adopting culturally appropriate legislation, and building the competence of regulatory and ethical agencies. Addressing these issues is critical to maximizing the advantages of health research for African populations and realizing Agenda 2063's vision of 'The Africa We Want'
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DOI: 10.4314/thrb.v26i5.11s
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