Human Health Research : Government Seeks to Guarantee Population’s Safety

The Speaker of the National Assembly, Hon. Cavaye Yeguie Djibril on March 29, 2022 in his Ngoa-Ekelle Office presided at the Chairmen’s conference that deemed admissible the bill from the President of the Republic relating to the medical research involving human subjects in Cameroon.
After the Chairmen’s Conference, the bill was tabled in the plenary sitting of the entire House presided at by the Deputy Speaker, Hon. Baoro Théophile. The bill seeks to regulate human health research in order to protect research participants throughout the implementation of the research process on human diseases, particularly during clinical trials. Government explains that the tabling of the bill in Parliament is a response to the shortcomings observed over the last few  decades in the field of human research in Cameroon. It cites the example of a scandal caused by the testing of an AIDS preventive treatment by an American NGO known as Family Health International (FHI) on commercial sex workers in Douala in May 2004 in violation of the related code of ethics and code of conduct. The outbreak of large-scale pandemics such as Covid-19  had led to the proliferation of therapeutic trials with no proper a priori or a posteriori control, hence the need to regulate the sector.
Government through the bill, intends to put in place a strategic framework laying down the guiding principles for  any medical research project. It therefore identifies potential research participants that are living persons, deceased persons, sociological groups, vulnerable persons, incapacitated adults, pregnant women, in vivo embryos and foetuses, and lays down conditions for t...