6 January 2020, Cairo – Committee members meet annually for strategic planning and to ensure compliance of health research in the Region with WHO policies and international guidelines for research on human subjects. This year it met from 17 to 18 November 2019, at the WHO Regional Office in Cairo, Egypt. The meeting reviewed progress on the recommendations of the previous meeting in 2018, planned the Committee's work for the new biennium (2020–2021), and discussed the upcoming regional bioethics summit and new challenges for the ethics of health research.

The meeting was co-chaired by HE Professor Mohamed Saleh Ben Ammar (Tunisia) and Professor Gamal Serour (Egypt), while Professor Niveen Abu-Rmeileh (Palestine) was selected as the meeting's rapporteur. The meeting covered many topics including: reviewing progress with recommendations of the 2018 meeting; governance of WHO-funded research: overview and issues (including health policy and systems research, surveillance activities and bio-sampling); the LAS-UNESCO Regional Charter on Ethics of Science &Technology; and resources for regional research ethics review committee members. It also covered the activities of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Bioethics (Karachi, Pakistan), an update on a capacity-building workshop on research during emergencies held in Amman, Jordan, in April 2019, upcoming events including the WHO/UNESCO Regional Summit of National Ethics/Bioethics Committees to be held in Cairo, Egypt, in December 2019 and the Global Bioethics Summit to be held in Lisbon, Portugal, in March 2020, and concurrent initiatives such as those on the ethics of artificial intelligence and gene editing.

The Committee members produced a list of recommendations including on: expanding role of the Committee to include the ethics of regional/national activities involving human subjects (especially biosampling); supporting bioethics/research ethics work in the Region, including new horizons for capacity-building; continuing to ethically review funded proposals/protocols (including RPPH and TDR proposals); and fostering work with UNESCO on bioethics and research ethics in the Region.

Related report

Summary report on the Annual meeting of the Eastern Mediterranean Research Ethics Review Committee
Cairo, Egypt, 17–18 November 2019