Ethics, emergencies and Ebola clinical trials: the role of governments and communities in offshored research

The Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in West Africa has stimulated investments in EVD research. While these research efforts are most welcome, we are concerned about the potential to ignore effective community ethics engagement programmes and critical government regulatory agencies in light of the urgency to conduct clinical trials for EVD therapies and vaccines. We discuss the reasons why community engagement with various research stakeholders is essential, how community engagement should be conducted, and the potential consequences of failing to engage both communities and regulatory agencies by drawing on past experiences in the field of HIV research. We highlight the importance of a) capacity building to enable local researchers design and implement EVD research for future epidemics, b) the need to support community research literacy, and c) the need to build the competency of research regulatory agencies on the continent to address EVD therapy and vaccine research.