7th National Conference of Forum for Ethics Review Committees in India (FERCICON 2020) was held in PGIMER, Chandigarh-160012 and was successfully completed virtually by the Experimental Pharmacology Laboratory (EPL), Department of Pharmacology, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), from27thto 29th November, 2020.
The theme of this conference was “Challenges faced in research ethics during the current COVID 19 pandemics”. The key objective of the conference was to share insights into recent research, global perspective, vaccine development, clinical trials, ethical concerns,traditional medicine research and social behavior research, by experts from basic, clinical and socio-behavioural research background as also other important stakeholders like funding agencies (ICMR and DBT), Pharma industry and Regulators. FERCICON 2020 includes a multidisciplinary group of national and international speakers to present and exchange innovative ideas, ethical challenges, and various approaches to combat COVID 19.
More than 300 delegates from prestigious institutes (AIIMS-Bhubaneswar, AIIMS New Delhi,Gandhi Medical College Bhopal, Govt Medical College Bhavnagar, Institute of Medical Sciences BHU Varanasi, JIPMER, Puducherry etc.) from 25 states of India attended the conference.
The conference started with welcome address by Prof. Bikash Medhi (Organizing Chairman) and Presidential address by Dr Vasantha Muthuswamy (President, FERCI) on 27th Nov 2020. Official video inauguration of the conference was done in the presence of Prof R.K. Sharma (Sub-dean, PGIMER, Chandigarh).
Prof. Jagat Ram (Director PGIMER, Chandigarh) graced the occasion. First scientific session of the conference started with excellent keynote address given by Dr Soumya Swaminanthan (Chief scientist, WHO, Geneva) on “Global perspective about the current pandemic” followed by a special address on Challenges in Public health research by Dr Cristina Torres (FERCAP coordinator) from University of Philippines. This was followed by Dr. Shinjini Bhatnagar from THSTI (DBT), Govt. of India, Dr. Chirag Trivedi, (President, Indian society for clinical research), Dr. Raman Gangakhedkar, ICMR, Delhi and Mr. A.K. Pradhan represents DCG(I), New Delhi. There were oral and poster presentations on interesting aspects pertaining to COVID-19 Pandemic from the participants.
Second day of the conference started by lecture of Dr Roli Mathur (Scientist F, NCDIR, Bengaluru) on “ICMR Guidelines, 2020 and Central Ethics Committee Human Research” followed by lecture of Dr Anup Aggrawal (Consultant, ICMR, New Delhi), Prof Pratibha Periera (JSS, Mysuru), Dr Ram Manohar (Research Director, Amrita School of Ayurveda, Kollam, Kerala), Dr C.S. Pramesh (Director, TMH, Mumbai), Dr Shubha Phadke, (SGPGI, Lucknow) and Prof. Reider Lie (University of Bergen, Norway). Oral and poster presentation continued from the first day on relevant topics.
On the last day of the conference, perspectives of different stakeholders were presented by Dr. Manoj Murehkar, Director National Institute of epidemiology (NIE), Chennai, Dr. N. Gogtay, KEM , Mumbai, Dr. Shalini Bharat, TISS, Mumbai, Prof. Bikash Medhi, PGIMER, Chandigarh and Mr. Prasanna Shirol, LSD Society, Bengaluru.
There was a Panel discussion on Data Sharing and Data management and the panellists were Dr. N.K. Arora, President, AIIMS (Patna), INCLEN, Delhi, Dr. Prashant Mathur, Director, NCDIR, Bengaluru, Dr. V.V. Rao, Director, NIMS, Delhi and Mr. Sebastian Verghese, Veeda CRC, Hyderabad. A special address was given by Dr Hugh Whittall (Director, Nuffled Council on Bioethics, London, UK) and the Valedictory address was given by Dr. V.M.Katoch, Former Secretary, DHR and DG, ICMR. Dr. Vasantha Muthuswamy chaired the Closing session Dr Nandini Kumar (Vice-president), Dr Urmila Thatte (Secretary) and Dr Sandhya Kamat (Treasurer) announced the prize winners of oral/poster sessions.
Prof. Bikash Medhi had taken feedback from the participants, the summary of which was presented. He then announced that the next conference will be held at NEIGRIHMS, Shillong. The conference was ended with conference summary and vote of thanks by Dr Ajay Prakash, organising secretary.The organizing team includes Dr. Ajay Praksah, Dr PhulenSarma, Dr Seema Bansal, Dr Gurjeet Kaur, Dr Rupa Joshi, Dr Saurabh, Dr Subodh, Ms. Sukhmeet, Ms. Ankita under the supervision of Prof. Bikash Medhi.
