Established by the Anatomy Department at Makerere University College of Health Sciences in (year), the Bioethics Resource Centre is dedicated to teaching, providing services, and conducting research in the field of bioethics. Despite the ongoing efforts of the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology and various professional councils and associations to regulate research conduct and promote ethical behaviour in medical practice through institutional frameworks, challenges persist, primarily due to limited national capacity for promoting and enforcing bioethics compliance. This considerably contributed to the development of the Bioethics resource centre.

The Centre operates under the auspices of the Makerere University Biomedical Research Centre (MakBRC), a centre of excellence wholly owned and guaranteed by Makerere University. The Bioethics Resource centre’s establishment aims to institutionalize and strengthen bioethics in training, research, and service within the structure and programs of the Makerere University Biomedical School.

The Bioethics resource centre successfully organised the 1st Makerere Bioethics conference at Hotel Africana, Kampala from the 11th to the 12th November, 2025. This conference hosted 643 delegates from various walks of life. The delegates were affiliated with various institutions including UNCST, UNESCO, Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, among others. The theme of the conference was “ Contemporary issues in Bioethics Practice”

The conference featured 4 plenary sessions, 6 parallel sessions, 2 panel sessions and over 20 oral and poster presentations that covered cutting-edge themes in emerging technologies, Data science, Research Ethics, Clinical Ethics, and public health ethics over the duration of the two-day conference. Various speakers emphasized the critical role partners and collaborations play in advancing ethics practice locally and internationally. The conference’s success was owed to a lot of significant actors, including the dedicated organising committee and the different partners and sponsors we had.

The success of this conference was attributed to many patterns that include; Makerere University college of Biomedical Sciences, UNCST, Centre for Bioethics Makerere university, MakBRC, Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI), Baylor Uganda, Medical Research Council (MRC), MU-JHU care Ltd, Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration (IDRC), among others