TY - JOUR T1 - Patient-centric research in the time of COVID-19: conducting ethical COVID-19 research in Africa JF - BMJ Global Health JO - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2020-003035 VL - 5 IS - 8 SP - e003035 AU - Victoria Nembaware AU - Nchangwi Syntia Munung AU - Alice Matimba AU - Nicki Tiffin Y1 - 2020/08/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/5/8/e003035.abstract N2 - Summary boxResearch practices should be ethical and transparent, prioritising patient benefits and provision of health carehealthcare, and respecting participant autonomy.Priority should be given to research studies with the potential for immediate translated patient benefits based on realistic interventions appropriate to an African context.Institutional Ethics Review Boards should be supported to ensure high-quality, rapid review of research proposals. Informed consent models should reflect research risk level and the heightened vulnerability of the study population during a health crisis. Consideration should be made for patients who are too ill to give consent, and inclusion of data from deceased patients. Participant information must be accessible and relevant to participants, in local languages, and include clear, realistic descriptions of potential benefits and risks.Community engagement using appropriate media channels can be effective in providing information and counter dissemination of false information.Funders and journal editors can provide additional checks and balances to ensure funded and published research from Africa is ethical, patient-centric, relevant and transparent.Without effective management, COVID-19 could be catastrophic in Africa, exacerbated by high infectious and non-infectious disease burdens, poor healthcare access and limited health resources.1 Projections estimate over 110 million infections and 300 000 mortalities in sub-Saharan Africa alone.2 Global evidence identifies contributing risk factors such as age, gender and existing comorbidities, but drivers of disease severity and poor survival in some patients are still unclear.3 African genetic variation underlies many differences in pathogen susceptibility, disease severity, drug response and patient outcomes compared with rest-of-world populations.4 5 African COVID-19 disease profiles may also differ given unique regional environmental challenges, population structure and genetic make-up, and potential proliferation of specific virus strains, limiting transferability of research findings from other continents.An urgent pandemic response is driving rapid assembly of COVID-19 research programmes, accelerated ethics review by Institutional Review Boards … ER -