THE RELEVANCE OF ETHICS IN DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH RESEARCH IN NIGERIA
2nd Biennial Conference
Authors
Abstract
Ethics is very essential to Public Health Research (PHR) and interventions which have high value to the society
and contributes significantly to health discoveries and improvement to public health. All through the phases or
stages of PHR design, investigators have responsibilities to ensure that good ethical conducts and principles are
adhere to. The relevance of ethics to public health stemmed from history of abuse of research participants which
gave birth to Nuremberg code, World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki, Council for International
Organization of Medical Sciences international guidelines. In Nigeria, National Code of Health Research Ethics
which applies to public healt*h and health research contain the ethical principles of; respect for persons;
beneficence/non-maleficence; and distributive justice. Major challenges relating to PHR ethics include poor
financial support for research, socio-cultural beliefs and practices relating to health, cultural perspectives on
decisional authority concerning health care and poor access to ethics review committee. The relevance of ethical
principles and issues is highly important in the design and implementation of PHR in Nigeria. Hence, any public
health-related research without the consideration for ethical principles may constitute abuse of research
participants and thus fail to contribute meaningfully to the improvement of health of people.