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The Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the University of Rwanda’s College of Medicine and Health Sciences (UR-CMHS) is an independent ethics committee that reviews and approves research projects submitted by CMHS students and staff, to protect the rights, safety, and welfare of research participants. The IRB is managed by the Center for Research and Innovation (CRI), a body dedicated to providing concrete support to UR-based investigators.
From October 27–30th, 2025, the CMHS-IRB and CRI welcomed members from the Pan African Bioethics Initiative (PABIN) and the Strategic Initiative for Developing Capacity in Ethical Review (SIDCER) to the UR-CMHRemera Campus. PABIN and SIDCER are international bodies that are appointed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to evaluate and recognize ethics committees(EC) on the continent. The purpose of their visit to Rwanda was to deliver a program on “Surveying and Evaluating Ethical Review Practices” for institutional and national ethics committee members. This program - the first of its kind since the CMHS-IRB was established back 2014 - consisted of a training workshop and in-depth assessments of the ethics review systems, followed by a feedback session where PABIN and SIDCER provided valuable recommendations for strengthening ethical review practices at the institutional and national levels.

On October 27th, PABIN and SIDCER delivererd a training workshop, with the purpose of strengthening ethical review in health research by equipping ethics committee members with the knowledge and tools to survey and evaluate ethics committees against international benchmarks, while remaining responsive to local context. The workshop was attended by members of the Rwanda National Ethics Committee (RNEC), the UR-IRB and IRBs of Rwanda’s major hospitals (University Teaching Hospital of Kigali [CHUK], University Teaching Hospital of Butare [CHUB], Rwanda Military Hospital [RMH], and King Faisal Hospital [KFH]). The workshop clarified the role of surveyors and evaluators for ethics committees, developed context appropriate methods for survey and evaluation, and ultimately, prepared our ethics committees to operate at international standards (set by WHO, WMA, CIOMS, and ICH GCP).

From October 28th-30th, the visiting PABIN and SIDCER team conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the UR CMHS IRB, in which they reviewed procedures and documentation, as well as observed an IRB board meeting. They conducted a similar, in depth evaluation with RNEC from October 31 – November 3rd, where evaluators comprehensively went through RNEC’s governing legislation, standard operating procedures (SOPs), processes, and documentation. On November 4th, after the two evaluations, the PABIN and SIDCER evaluators led a feedback session where they provided practical recommendations to support timely, high quality ethics review at institutional and national level, and reinforce alignment with international standards. The IRBs and RNEC expressed appreciation for the feedback and confirmed their commitment to implementing the recommendations to further professionalize their services, affirming their dedication to continuous improvement in ethics review and governance.

The workshop and evaluation were made possible by effective coordination across units and partners. The CRI would like to recognise Mr. Emile Nisingizwe and Mr. Sunday Francois Xavier for their efforts to organise the program, coordinating with ethics committees and collaborating organizations to ensure a focused, productive visit. They were supported by Ms. Belyse Ishimwe, who led the administrative and logistics arrangements.

This visit marks an important step in advancing ethics review practice within UR CMHS and nationally. By combining training with hands on evaluation, the engagement delivered actionable recommendations and a shared understanding of what strong, reliable ethics oversight looks like in day to day work. RNEC and the IRBs’ members’ receptiveness to the evaluation findings, and their stated commitment to implementing improvements, reflects a shared goal : professionalizing ethics services so that health research in Rwanda is reviewed efficiently, transparently, and to recognized international standards.

Training workshop participants from different Ethics Committees with trainers from PABIN and SIDCER