Getting ethical approval is essential to conduct a study in any society. Thus establishing ethical committees or institutions are mandatory to approve proposals and to monitor the research activities in any societies. However, in some developing countries there are no such committees or institutions; in these cases is it possible to conduct studies without getting ethical approval?
I've seen people taking formal approval from their head of department in cases where there was no established committee. You can then mention in the article that since there was no ethical committee, the hospital protocol dictated that approval be taken from the head of department. An even better approach may be to actually approach the head of the institution and ask them to set a committee up.
Suppose the head of the department or hospital manager refuse to approve the study; is it possible to conduct studies without getting ethical approval? Is taking a consent from the patient enough?
I don't think getting the permission of the Head of Department and the consent of the patient is enough to give good ethical credentials to a study in a country with no legally established ethics committees. One of the purposes of a committee is to ensure the perspective of the common good is part of the decision. An investigator and Head of department can both loose sight of this in the excitement of starting a new project that seems very interesting to them. Many of the problems leading to scandals (eg the blood transfusion scandals), are rooted in different views of what is acceptable held by professionals on the one hand, and the public on the other. In deciding on the acceptability of a project it is necessary to hear both of these views and where they conflict have a method of deciding how to proceed. To do this it absolutely essential to have somebody representing the wider public interest/common good and professionals do not always do this well. Therefore if there is no ethics comittee, I think you should set a small local one up including some wise lay people as wel as the professionals.
Ethics form an integral part of research and without ethical approval I feel strongly not to conduct a study. Why not set up an committee, the professionals from different departments and informed lay persons. This would be better than no approval or only professional "approval".
We have done a prospective study related to Covid 19, which began during the lockout when the ethical committee meeting was repeatedly canceled as a precautionary measure. So We have obtained permission from the head of the Department before the collection of data for the study, thus mentioned the same circumstances.
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