Main Objectives

  • The NBC has been conceived as a regular platform for showcasing intuitional and individual engagement with bioethics and for enhancing interest in bioethics at a national level
  • NBC aims to enhance the awareness of, sensitivity to, and enquiry on bioethics, to facilitate inter-disciplinary interaction, discussion and communication on bioethics, ethical dimensions of health care technologies in clinical practice, research and public health and policies
  • Most importantly, it hopes to provide a platform for popularizing the discipline and boosting its growth
  • Essentially, NBC recognizes the need of bioethics initiatives in the country and ensure opportunities for a broad range of groups and institutions to shape the national discourse



1st NBC was held in Mumbai in 2005

Themes:

  1. Ethical challenges in biomedical and social science research
  2. Ethical responsibilities of clinical care providers
  3. Intersections of bioethics and public health/clinical medicine



2nd NBC was held in Bangalore in 2007

Theme: Moral and Ethical Imperatives of Health care Technologies

The 3rd NBC is going to take place in New Delhi in 2010

Theme: Governance of healthcare – ethics, equity and justice
In recent decades, the Indian health sector has seen revolutionary changes. With the wave of globalisation that has hit India, world class technologies, super-specialities and big corporate and private sector hospitals have emerged in India, but these have somehow distanced themselves from the poor and needy in the country. The new wave has also paved the way for international collaborations in the field of research, service delivery and health education. Although significant achievements have been made, there are still gaping holes in the public healthcare services which cater to a significant proportion of the population.

Keeping this pressing concern in mind, the Third NBC on the theme “Governance of healthcare – ethics, equity and justice” is being held on November 18-20, 2010, at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, the premier medical institute in the country. The conference is meant to bring together diverse perspectives on governance in healthcare, towards building an equitable and just healthcare system. The National Bioethics Conference will provide a broad platform for achieving a productive dialogue between practitioners, policy-makers and activists to this end.

The basic structure of the conference will include five plenary sessions that will be held during the three-day conference. While the inaugural and closing ceremonies will focus on the broad theme of the conference, the remaining three plenary sessions will focus on specific aspects of governance such as;

  1. Law and policy
  2. Implementation and Monitoring Systems
  3. Social and Public Accountability.

A total of three parallel paper and poster sessions will be organized. A distinctive feature of the NBC is the inclusion of workshops that focus on skill building and information sharing based on the broad theme of the conference.

Some of the issues which will be discussed in the conference:

  • Universal health care
  • Clinical research
  • Stem cell research
  • Indian systems of Medicine
  • Medical technology (ART, imaging technologies etc)
  • Organ transplantation
  • Medical education
  • Medical tourism
  • Health care reforms
  • Regulation of health care
  • Ethics committees
  • Publication ethics
  • Accreditation of health institutions
  • Public private partnerships
  • Community participation


Special features of the conference will include:

  • A symposium for ethics committee members of the different national and international medical and research institutions, state and central government departments and government institutes and agencies, which will focus on sharing of experiences, skill-building and information provision.
  • Workshop for staff and editors of scientific journals and publications to sensitize them to bioethics and international standards for publication.