CAMBIN – GENERAL ASSEMBLY MEETING

The CAMBIN General Assembly meeting took place on the 27th of May 2023 at the Muna Foundation Conference Centre in Yaounde, Cameroon. This General Assembly was organized under the theme “Capacity Building for Research Ethics in                                                                              Cameroon”. The GA had the following agenda points;

The meeting started with presentations on the SNECFA Project, Ethics Lab, and Clinical Ethics from an African Perspective. This was followed by an activity report on Cambin meetings. In 2022, they were a total of 10 CAMBIN meetings including 1 extraordinary CAMBIN meeting at the end of a SNECFA Workshop in Niger. The Cambin Secretariat was then presented and new members of CAMBIN were announced. A recap was done of activities carried out in the last year such as;

• Workshops on SOPs development in Niger, Mali and Chad
• SNECFA Audit
• TRREE Experts recruitment
• Think Tank meetings
• SC virtual meetings
• Annual report to EDCTP

Details were also provided on the number of Protocols reviewed:

• Between January- December 2022, CAMBIN received 14 applications for ethics approval and renewal of ethics approval (compared to 38 in 2021).
• Ethics approval and renewal were issued for 8 of the applications, while ethics approval was withheld from 1 applicant. By the end of 2022, a final decision had not been made in 5 applications for various reasons, including non-response to initial ERCC feedback/comments.
• Most applications received were classified as local/national applications, with a small proportion from international applicants.

The  Annual Action Plan, the Financial Report(2022) (including ERCC and SNECFA financial reports), and  Provisionary Budget for CAMBIN were shared to all present.

At the end of the meeting, the election results were announced and the new EXCO (2023- 2028) was presented to all present.