Consultation on the feasibility and ethics of specific, probable Controlled Human Infection Model study scenarios in India: A report

ABSTRACT

On March 6, 2019, a workshop was held as part of a larger public consultation exercise to evaluate the perceptions of participants from diverse backgrounds of studies involving Controlled Human Infection Models (CHIMs) (1,2) in India, through three specific case scenarios. This workshop was organised by the Health and Humanities Division of the St. John’s Research Institute, Bangalore with funding from the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (TSHTI), Faridabad (www.thsti.res.in), an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India This was an on-going effort of the Division to bring public discourse centre stage in the discussion on the use, ethics and regulations related to CHIM studies, and the introduction of such studies in India. Participants included epidemiologists, community/public health experts, microbiologists, infectious disease specialists, basic and translational scientists, ethicists, journalists and lawyers