Project Coordinator: Harare City Health Department (Moses Zimba)
Location: Zimbabwe
Budget: € 42,933
Duration of project: March 2011-March 2012

The objective of this project is to establish an Institutional Review Board (IRB) for health facilities in the City of Harare through training 40 health workers, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, laboratory scientists and the clergy. At the end of the project, 10 of the trained health workers will become members of the IRB and the other 30 will assist the IRB with the general monitoring of compliance by researchers in the respective health facilities as they perform their normal duties and will fill vacancies arising in the IRB due to resignations and natural causes. Non-compliance with research ethics during project implementation is a major challenge. Researchers have the tendency to abandon the approved procedure of handling research participants, hence the need for closer monitoring. The project will seek to improve the conduct of health research and ensure that proposed disease intervention clinical trials are conducted using internationally accepted standards. The project also establish a secretariat and strengthen the capacity of the IRB to review proposals with a clear understanding of study designs and implementation.