Consensus Generation Meeting: Disaster Research & Ethics

Consensus Generation Meeting on ‘Disaster Research and Ethics from a Developing World Perspective‘ was held on 13^th January 2007 at Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, Colombo 7 from 9.00 am to 12.00 noon. Similarly, in parallel bioethics initiatives had taken place in other core-group countries. Networking among them existed but in a limited scale. Faced with the aftermath of the Asian tsunami, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, recurrent floods, cyclones, droughts, conflicts, and other disasters that devastate communities in the South and South-East Asian Region, the group came together as a multidisciplinary group to form the ‘Working Group on Disaster Research and Ethics (WGDRE)‘ in 2007, through a Wellcome Trust conference Grant. The group produced a draft guideline for disaster research and ethics covering 12 important areas;

1. Relevance of research to disaster situations,
2. Informed consent and voluntariness,
3. Role of Community consultation and participation,
4. Exploitation,
5. Dignity, privacy and confidentiality,
6. Risk minimization,
7. Professional competence,
8. Public interest and distributive justice,
9. Dissemination of results,
10. Ethics review,
11. International collaborative research,
12. Institutional responsibilities and arrangements.

Even though there is overlap with existing guidelines, the group agreed that greater vigilance is necessary in disaster-related research to ensure that the general ethical principles are adhered to and participants are protected. The initial group consisted of; Prof. Athula Sumathipala (Institute for Research & Development in Health & Social Care), Prof. Aamir Jafarey (University of Karachi, Pakistan), Prof. Aasim Ahmad (Aga Khan University, Pakistan), Prof. Leonardo de Castro (University of Philippines), Prof. Darryl Mercer (UNESCO Thailand), Prof. Omar Rahman (Independent University of Bangladesh), Dr. Nandani Kumar (Indian Council for Medical Research). Dr. Anant Bhan, Dr. Sisira Siribaddana (Institute for Research & Development in Health & Social Care), Dr. Sriyani Beneragama,

The group has experts in ethics as well as research in different fields. Presentations on the draft has been made on behalf on behalf of the group (dissemination opportunities were restricted due to limited funding available) in various fora including at the 8^th Asian Bioethics Conference (Bangkok) in 2007 and the 2^nd National Bioethics Conference (India) in 2007. A seminar was conducted on ‘Disaster Research Ethics’ at the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Hospital and Cancer Research Centre, Lahore. The Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Culture (CBEC), Pakistan is including a section on disaster ethics in its Masters in Bioethics program starting this year. Guidelines are now published in the Asian Bioethics Review journal.