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. 2019 Jun 13;20(1):40.
doi: 10.1186/s12910-019-0377-7.

Mention of ethical review and informed consent in the reports of research undertaken during the armed conflict in Darfur (2004-2012): a systematic review

Ghaiath Hussein  1 , Khalifa Elmusharaf  2
Affiliations

Mention of ethical review and informed consent in the reports of research undertaken during the armed conflict in Darfur (2004-2012): a systematic review

Ghaiath Hussein et al. BMC Med Ethics. .

Abstract

Background: Armed conflict in Darfur, west Sudan since 2003 has led to the influx of about 100 international humanitarian UN and non-governmental organizations to help the affected population. Many of their humanitarian interventions included the collection of human personal data and/or biosamples, and these activities are often associated with ethical issues. A systematic review was conducted to assess the proportion of publicly available online reports of the research activities undertaken on humans in Darfur between 2004 and 2012 that mention obtaining ethical approval and/or informed consent.

Methods: This systematic review is based on a systematic literature search of Complex Emergency Database, ReliefWeb, PubMed), followed by a hand search for the hardcopies of the eligible reports archived in the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in Brussels.

Results: The online search showed that out of the 68 eligible studies, 13.2% (9) reported gaining ethical approval and 42.6% (29) that an informed consent was obtained from the participants. The CRED search included 138 eligible reports. None of these reports mentioned gaining ethical approval and 17 (12.3%) mentioned obtaining informed consent from their participants.

Conclusions: The proportion of studies reporting ethical review and informed consent was smaller than might be expected, so we suggest five possible explanations for these findings. This review provides empirical evidence that can help in planning ethical conduct of research in humanitarian settings.

Keywords: Developing countries; Humanitarian ethics; Non-governmental organizations; Public health ethics; Research ethics.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
PRISMA 2009 Flowchart for online and CRED search. There were two main sources for search for studies. The full reports of the humanitarian-related studies were searched in ReliefWeb (http://reliefweb.int), which is a specialized digital service of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). 27 studies were eligible in ReliefWeb. Complex Emergency Database (CEDAT) was only used for secondary analysis, as it does not provide full text reports so none of its reports was eligible for inclusion. Second, the clinical and non-epidemiological studies were searched in PubMed, BioMed Central, where 19 and 4 studies, respectively were considered eligible, and targeted search in the websites of the main international humanitarian organizations and the Sudanese federal ministry of health. Targeted search resulted in 18 eligible studies
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Sources of ethical approval as mentioned in the studies included in the systematic review (N = 68). Out of 68 eligible studies included in this review, only 9 (13%) mentioned that they were ethically approved. Three studies (4%) were approved by a university ethics committee, three studies (4%) were approved an NGO’s ethics committee, while only one study mentioned to be approved by the national research ethics committee (NREC) of Sudan
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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