'Need to strengthen ethics panel for clinical trials'

With rapid expansion in the field of clinical research, doctors in Delhi have called for improving the role of ethics committees.

They said although ethics committees have been around for a while, there is genuine lack of understanding of issues, both by investigators and committee members.

“There is an urgent need to have training programmes at various levels to increase the pool of competent ethics professionals,” said Dr Sita Naik, advisor to chairman, research task force of Apollo Hospital.

India has seen a drastic drop in clinical trials of drugs this year after some toughened norms were put in place following directives from Supreme Court.

According to the new rules, medical institutes should set up independent ethics committees to monitor drug trials. Also, the government made it mandatory for ethics committees to address issues such as death of subjects during drug trials and compensation paid to them in such cases.