Bloemfontein - A professor from the University of the Free State has been appointed by Health Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize as the chairperson of the National Health Research Ethics Council of South Africa (NHREC).
Professor Mamello Sekhoacha, who was appointed to the NHREC council in 2013, confirmed her three-year appointment, which commenced in January and will end in 2023.
Sekhoacha is also associate professor for the Department of Pharmacology in the Faculty of Health Sciences at UFS.
The NHREC is the statutory body responsible for the country’s governance and advancement of health research ethics. The NHREC also sets ethical norms and standards for health research.
“It is an honour for me to serve on the NHREC for the third term,” Sekhoacha said in a statement on Wednesday, highlighting that the council had achieved remarkable outputs in the past three years.
“One of the goals of the NHREC is to further broaden the scope of the ethics in health research guidelines from ‘biomedical research’ to ‘health-related research’ to ensure that adequate guidance is provided for those in health-related disciplines, as a response to the changing environment of research involving humans and the broader meaning of health research,” Sekhoacha said.
Against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a global paradigm shift in the role of ethics in health research, and Sekhoacha believes it has resulted in an increased emphasis on the scientific and social value of research.
“We need more comprehensive guidelines with nuanced commentaries to indicate how the ethical principles that emanated from biomedical research involving humans could be effectively implemented in other disciplines of health-related research,” she said.
The university’s Professor Corli Witthuhn, vice-rector of Research and Internationalisation, commended Sekhoacha on her appointment.
“The NHREC governs the research ethics processes in South Africa, and it is strategically important for the UFS to now have one of our own academics play such a nationally important role.
“We have been using Prof. Sekhoacha’s expertise on issues of ethics and we are looking forward to working with her to continue to better our own ethics processes,” said Witthuhn.
African News Agency