Ethics committees in Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia is a country in transition (after Milosevic's authoritarian era). Medical ethics as an obligatory subject has been taught at the High School of Nursing in Belgrade since 1968 and at the School of Medicine of the University of Belgrade since 1973. Ethics Committee (EC) of the Serbian Medical Society exists since 1960. ECs should have been established at every health care facility in the country according the law (1990), However, many health care institutions have nor yet fulfilled this obligation. Hospital EC has two roles: an ethical review of biomedical research and of ethics issues arising in the health care. No research involving human subjects can be performed without prior approval of the protocol by EC. On the other hand, the hospital staff and patients are mostly unaware about the existence and helpful potential of EC.