By Chris Anyokwu
We all love music, don’t we? But not the whine of sickness and death that mosquitoes produce within the vicinity of the ear. That is why it is said: You kill mosquitoes or mosquitoes kill you. Simple as that. There’s no colouring of the fact or beating about the bush. Mosquitoes are deadly customers and have killed millions through the years. They have also wrecked and ruined lofty dreams of their victims, who, by losing precious man-hours due to their bites, had missed the bus.
There is, to be sure, no African alive today who, one way or another, has not lost loved ones to these lethal gnats. Other diseases like Tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, sickle-cell anaemia, diarrhoea, and whooping cough, etc. have also claimed millions of lives in Africa but none of these diseases has decimated and destroyed lives as much as malaria has done. But thank goodness, not anymore. On the 6th of October, 2021, the World Health Organisation head, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced to the world the development of a malaria vaccine known as RTS,S/AS01 or Mosquirix. The ground-breaking vaccine was developed by GlaxoSmithKline, a British drugmaker. It is understood that the development of this vaccine has been in the works for more than thirty years, specifically since the 1980s.
The WHO has thus recommended the malaria vaccine for children at risk in sub-Saharan Africa and in other regions with moderate to high plasmodium falciparum malaria transmission. The recommendation is based on results from an ongoing pilot programme in Ghana, Kenyaand Malawi that reached more than 800,000 children since 2019. “This is a historic moment. The long-awaited malaria vaccine for children is a breakthrough for science, child health and malaria control”, said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Further, it is believed that more than 260,000 African children under the age of five die from malaria annually. “For centuries, malaria has stalked sub-Saharan Africa, causing immense personal suffering”, according to Dr MatshidisoMoeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa. It has taken a long time to develop a malaria vaccine, but the good news is that, finally, it is here! Credit to the team of scientists, doctors, pharmacists, laboratory technologists, etc. who worked day and night to pull off this wonderful feat of scientific research.
There is joy and good cheer all across the world because of this great news and, it is reasonable to say Christmas has come in October in sub-Saharan Africa in particular and across the world in general. Many people might not fully appreciate the magnitude of this medical miracle, perhaps, not having witnessed the living hell an under-age-child goes through when down with the malaria scourge. It’s better imagined than experienced. In a typical ICU or paediatric ward in a hospital, it is usually bedlam as child victims of malaria bawl interminably with pin-pricks of searing pains wrack their entire body. They nearly always die in the absence of a vaccine as most of the prophylactic drugs are ineffective. How about when a pregnant woman comes down with an acute bout of malaria? She either loses her pregnancy or loses her life in the process. This is what is meant by maternal mortality. Truth be told, malaria hardly spares both mother and child in tropical Africa. Even a full-grown adult, as strong as a bull can be reduced in a trice to a shivering weeping-willow when he gets a sting from a mosquito. Some of the symptoms of malaria include pains in the muscles or abdomen, fever, chills, fatigue, malaise, sweating, headache, fast heart rate, pallor, nausea and vomiting. Permit me to quote in full,Tade Ipadeola’s poem on malaria written “For children of Africa”:
Of all the gnats that swarm the world
Anopheles is worst. Of all the fates
That may befall it leaves you lying curled
And if help comes not very quick it wastes
Without a thought, and young or old
Or black or white it cares not very much.
And thanks to rising temperatures, what’s cold
Will soon be warm. And everywhere as such
Because our foe anopheles. How very sweet
How very sound the song that this gnat sings
How full the hospitals become each tweet
Our fell foe makes, her bites are pings
That can broadcast a range of harsh symptoms
Fever and cold, dengue and flu, elephantiasis
Anopheles and Pandora, they dance to two tom-toms-
And either you will dance along or be their nemesis. (p. 67. The Sahara Testaments).
There is apocryphal evidence that the anopheles singlehanded sent the colonialist packing in Africa. Chinua Achebe does not go so far as to put the matter quite indelicately but he always skirts it nonetheless, talking about how the colonialists bemoan their lot in Africa on account of the atrocious humidity of tropical Africa. The anopheles comes into the picture but more or less as an irritant. Having left Africans to their own devices upon independence, the erstwhile colonial masters didn’t seem too eager to help fix the mess on the continent, namely: eradicating the anopheles.
But in the light of enlightene
d self-interest, considering the globalised nature of the contemporary world, it finally dawned on them that they cannot go it alone. To make the world more liveable, it’s imperative to give the Black man a hand. You do not clap with one hand, the immortal MKO Abiola once quipped. Accordingly, to create the wealth of nations and make the world a better place, you need to get everyone, Whites and Blacks, on board. This is the quasi-altruistic motivation behind the eventual development of a malaria vaccine by the West. We may, therefore, seize upon this auspicious occasion of the production of a life-saving vaccine to ponder again on Africa’s contributions to the world’s civilisation. It is not enough to mouth the shop-worn mantra that Africa is the cradle of the human race; it is not enough to claim, sometimes without supporting proof, that the West stole Africa blind to develop itself; it is not enough to claim that African slaves developed the West and are still doing so to keep the system running. The rest of the world, notably the US, the UK and China, are busy technologizing the world, setting their sights on producing alternatives to Nature’s elements. China, for one, has manufactured its own sun, its own rain and snow, among others and is intent upon becoming the next unipolar power, displacing the USA. For their part, the US and the UK are both combining to help Australia build its own sub-marine ships, thereby leaving France in the lurch.
Even so, France itself is hard at work trying to manufacture its (read: Europe) sun. Whilst all of this is going on, our Iceman at the helm is hell-bent on excavating the Byzantine relics of yore such as ancient cattle routes as though we are heading backwards to the Biblical Garden of Eden on camel’s back. Cry, beloved country! In today’s world, one wonders what exactly Africans as a people or even as a continent are contributing to the growth and development of humanity, beyond population growth. Much as these issues might divide opinion, with people getting extremely emotional about facts on the ground, the fact still remains that Africans have not been able to cover themselves in glory when it comes to issues of governance, education, health care, security, etc.
Prebendalism has become state policy in most post-colonial nation-states in Africa. Here, it’s all kleptomania conducted in what effectively are neo-colonial “Animal Farms”. In late 2019 when the new coronavirus or Covid-19 pandemic broke, the race to develop a vaccine to checkmate the deadly virus commenced in earnest. While Europe, Asia and the USA got down to brass tack regarding the development of vaccines against Covid-19, Africa was, expectedly, missing in action.
Now after western pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Sinovac, Astrazeneca/University of Oxford have produced or developed the vaccine, we are here crying “Vaccine Apartheid”, “Vaccine Inequity”, “Vaccine Nationalism” and other ludicrous catch-phrases of self-clowning. The question to ask, then, is: what is the scientific community in Africa doing? Can’t African scientists use the African Union (the AU) as a collective platform or framework for joint action?
How about regional platforms such as Southern African region, West African sub-region, East African zone or North African regional initiative? Can’t the so-called Big Nations of Africa such as South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco come together to develop vaccines? If, for a host of reasons, this is not feasible, can’t a country like South Africa or Nigeria go it alone? South African universities, for instance, are usually top five in Africa and also rank high in global university ratings. How come they are unable to develop a vaccine in order to save us all from this shame? What, really, does it take to develop a vaccine? What does it require in terms of expertise, funding, environment, infrastructure, legal and ethical regulation? Are all these things beyond an African superpower like South Africa or Nigeria?
In Nigeria, for example, whenever talk of vaccine development arises, you hear comedians in white overalls and lab coats tout their herbal potions, mixtures, preparations and concoctions which cannot stand rigorous scientific analysis, even though NAFDAC and SON certify these types of dubious brew. The truth of the matter is that these “home remedies” (not vaccines!) rely for efficacy more on faith than on science, they rely more on mysticism than on pragmatism. What, for instance, is going on at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan? How about the University of Ibadan, University of Lagos, the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife or Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria? How’s UNN, Nsukka doing? How about the multitude of tertiary institutions sited in Kaduna? What is the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology doing about this matter? Are these institutions merely collecting budgetary allocations without any concrete, measurable contributions to our nation’s progress and prosperity? What are the research policies of our various Faculties of Science in our first-generation federal universities?
But more importantly, how much annual budgetary allocation goes to the Education sector in Nigeria? 8%?6%? How much? You do not buy an aeroplane with peanut shells. The U.S. annual budgetary allocation to Mathematics research alone constitutes a third of our own entire budget. In a meeting of birds, the butterfly would do well to keep off. Under the present anomalous circumstances, it is not an exaggeration to say that our so-called young scientists and science students in our universities only see pictures of laboratory equipment or at best, are shown abandoned and rusty specimens in derelict laboratories. They have never set their eyes on lab equipment such as a pipette, test tube, Erlenmeyer flash, barometer, indicator, stopwatch, alcohol burner, graduated cylinders, magnifiers or chemicals. They hear of Bunsen burner without knowing how to really use it to get results. Again, how much pressure are professors of science mounting on the government to make funds available for research? Are they accessing TETFUND and various grants? Or are their contributions to knowledge merely theoretical – churning out of peer-reviewed, high-impact, Scopus-recognised academic publications produced in order to meet the Appointments and Promotions (A and P) requirements for career advancement? Is this what our university system has been reduced to? Mere pseudo-intellectual echo chambers where alien sounds are re-echoed? Barren granaries where human ruminants chew the cud of imported, endogenous gnosis? How do we decolonise knowledge production and achieve intellectual independence?
However, let us give thanks and praises for small mercies. Malaria vaccine has come to bolster other prophylactic measures in our collective struggle against ill-health. Infant and maternal mortality rates in tropical Africa will reduce substantially. Nonetheless, observers and analysts have expressed worry over the development of a malaria vaccine, pointing out the unintended consequence of leading to population explosion. The anopheles mosquito has always helped to reduce our populations by killing thousands of people yearly. Now, that’s not gonna happen no more! Hurray for malaria vaccine! Merry Christmas in advance!
*Chris Anyokwu writes from the University of Lagos.