Implementing National System of Health Research Ethics Regulations: The Nigerian Experience

Efforts by Nigerian authorities to institutionalize health research dates back to the early 70's with the establishment of the Medical Research Council. Subsequently efforts to strengthen a national health research system in line with the concept of Essential National Health Research (ENHR) were made but albeit un-successfully. This may have been as a result of poor political support, and lack of regulations to promote health research in the country. However little is known about health research regulations and their implementation in Nigeria. Health and health research in Nigeria is not regulated via a set of clearly defined legislation. While the country has developed a regulation document for health research ethics, compliance to this document is likely to be affected by the lack of legislation in for the health system as an entity. In this paper we narrate the developments in health, health research, and health regulations; we describe process for, and extent of implementation of the National Code of Health Research Ethics. We conclude that several factors affect the extent of implementation of the ethics code amongst which legislation is an important one.