**11. Institutional review boards**

In the practice of medicine, research is an important and essential tool [36–38]. Institutional review boards are ethical committees in institutions that analyze and review proposed research protocols, it serves as a deliberation forum in which ethical issues in medical researchers are analyzed (WHO). Some institutions have more than one institutional review board [39]. Institutional review board plays an important role in medical practice. Some of these roles of the institutional review boards are to protect human subjects in the course of any medical research [39]. This is because some researches may have detrimental effects on research participants, some of these effects may lead to morbidity and even mortality. Institutional review board act as risk benefit analysis intermediary between research participants and the researcher. They also determines if the research should be commenced or not [38]. They ensure that the research is conducted as specified by the researcher in the research protocol. Institutional review boards are important in the improvement of medical practice by working with researches to apply good ethical principles in their research [40]. Each institutional review board has its guidelines. Some have documents that must be used while applying for ethical approval for any study. The institutional review boards are made up of persons with expertise in medical ethics and medical specialties. There are different types of institutional review board namely national ethics committee, research ethics committee and clinical ethics committee (WHO). Globally, there are different local and medical national institutional review boards and communities [17]. An example of a national ethics committee is the National Health Research Ethics Committee of Nigeria (NHREC). In medical research, the human subjects are a very valuable resource hence there safety has to be protected [37]. Extra scrutiny is done on research that will be carried out among vulnerable populations [38]. This is to avoid coercion in the recruitment of research participants. The vulnerable populations are children and minors, older persons, the mentally retarded, pregnant women and people in conflict and war zones.
