• Friday, March 29, 2024
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BusinessDay

COVID-19: Journey to Madagascar

From their utterances to actions and even body language, the government of Nigeria has left no one in doubt that they are at their wit’s end in what is clearly a lame-duck fight or posturing against the prowling invisible enemy called coronavirus (Covid-19).

With the lamentation on lack of funds, leading to passionate appeals for support from individuals and corporate bodies, and complaints about inadequate isolation centres, bed space and test kits, the government has also demonstrated lack of capacity and unwillingness to think or cause people to think of a local solution for the deadly virus.

As it is today, there is no known government coordinated or sponsored effort in terms of research aimed at finding a vaccine for known and yet-to-be discovered patients of coronavirus in Nigeria. Like a woman always waiting for a ready-made home, Nigeria is waiting for other countries to produce for it to consume.

This explains why, a few days ago, the country, like a swimmer in a turbulent sea struggling to swim ashore, decided to import the Madagascan herbal cure called ‘Covid Organics’ (CVO) for use in treatment of coronavirus.

“Our country does not want to do anything; it is always waiting for others to do something and then it will import for consumption. Up till now, nobody has been commissioned by the government to carry out research to find a cure for Covid-19,” noted Sam Ohuabunwa, president of Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria at a media programme in Lagos on Thursday.

Madagascar, one of the very small African countries, is just an island country lying off the southeastern coast of Africa. It is the fourth largest island in the world after Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo.

The agrarian country, with 22 million population of which is slightly larger than that of Lagos, is one of the world’s poorest countries that took humans 300,000 years to discover.

This island country, the economy of which has been based on the cultivation of paddy rice, coffee, vanilla and cloves, is so poor that it depends on foreign aid. Ironically, this is where Africa’s most populous nation and the continent’s self-acclaimed largest economy, has decided to look up to for its health emergency.

Ohuabunwa lamented that with over 30 research institutes and more than 150 universities, Nigeria is unable to initiate activities that could lead to developing a vaccine for treating infectious diseases such as Covid-19, pointing out that research is not what an individual could undertake without a grant or government support. “Research is usually capital intensive, takes time and could fail,” he noted.

Obi Adigwe, DG/CEO, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD), agrees, stressing that research is heavily capital intensive and takes a long time from conception to conclusion.

Adigwe noted that collaboration is grossly lacking among research institutes and other scientific bodies, adding that Nigeria has got enough capacity to carry research and come out with results whose efficacy can be attested to anywhere in the world. “But the funding is not there,” he pointed out.

He is of the view that there should be a lot more collaborative efforts by research institutes, the federal ministry of health, NAFDAC, Federal Ministry of Science and Technology and other allied bodies for research purposes that will place the country in good stead to fight diseases such as Covid-19.

Unlike Nigeria that thrives in a waiting game, Madagascar, about three weeks ago officially launched a locally produced medicine it believes can prevent and cure patients suffering from COVID-19 ailment.

The drug, according to Andry Rajoelina, president of the country, was developed by the Malagasy Institute of Applied Research and branded COVID Organics (CVO).

While presenting the drug to the media, President Rajoelina said it contained Artemisia, a plant cultivated in the country to fight malaria. “All trials and tests have been conducted and its effectiveness in reducing symptoms has been proven for the treatment of patients with COVID-19 in Madagascar,” President Rajoelina said.

“This herbal tea gives results in seven days,” the president assured and has been magnanimous enough to share this herbal cure with other African countries, including the continent’s Big Brother, Nigeria.

Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and Chairman, Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, Boss Mustapha, told Nigerians at one of their daily briefings that President Muhammadu Buhari had directed the airlifting of Nigeria’s allocation of the Madagascan herbal cure.

“This means that this government is already tired of this Covid-19; it means they don’t know any other thing to do. So there was nothing they were doing before in terms of finding a cure for this virus,” Anthony Chukwu, a clinical psychologist and researcher, asked rhetorically.

Chukwu stated that it was clear that the government did not know what to do again when it decided to ease the lockdown on the country’s major cities “when it was clear that we were not getting better with the number of confirmed cases and deaths spiking on daily basis.”

In many respects, it is obvious that Nigeria is not serious with fighting the dreaded virus. But one good thing Nigerians say Covid-19 has done for the country, even if by default, is to further expose and emphasise the emptiness in the country’s healthcare system.

According to them, the country and its managers were caught pants-down by this pandemic and this is largely because this is a global problem that has blocked all escape routes for those managers, forcing them to confess they never knew the system was so deep in the mess they have seen it.

Apart from the personal responsibility citizens are being compelled to take, the next best approach to dealing with the virus is testing. But Nigeria is not doing enough here because it is incapacitated. The country folks in the Eastern part of the country are gloating over the low infection rate in the region, apparently unaware that it is lack of testing that puts them under that illusion.

For a country of 200 million people, there are only 24 laboratories nationwide for Covid-19 testing, according to the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). Even at that, the distribution is a source of worry as it covers only 15 out of the 36 states of the federation.

There are seven laboratories currently located in South West, including Lagos (4), Ogun (1), Oyo (1), and Osun (1) while the South-South has five laboratories in Edo (2), Delta (1), and Rivers (2).

The North Central has three laboratories in the FCT (2) and Plateau (1), while the entire and vast North East has only one laboratory in Maiduguri.

The North West Region has six laboratories located in Kaduna (2), Kano (3) and Sokoto (1) while the South East had one (1) in Ebonyi before the designation of Everight Diagnostic Laboratory Services, a private laboratory in Owerri, Imo State, as a Covid-19 testing centre, bringing the number to two.

Although a new state government laboratory is being developed for Anambra, it remains a puzzle that a medical Centre of Excellence like the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH) Enugu is not being considered for a Hitech laboratory.

The University of Nigeria is the second (and first indigenous) university in Nigeria designated as a Centre of Excellence in medicine and surgery, yet that has not qualified it for a federal medical laboratory.

These lapses and a lot more unsubstantiated reasons account for why, as at 5:04 pm on Friday, 15 May 2020, the giant of Africa has been able to test only 30,657 persons since it began testing in March 2020, in a country of 200 million populations.

In his well-publicised article recently, Chukwuma Charles Soludo, a professor of economics and a former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), advised that “We should think globally but act locally and opportunistically to survive and prosper, and exploit the global opportunities offered by the crises.”

According to the renowned economist, “Our western and local (herbal) medical experts and research institutions should all be mobilised to come up with solutions. Those with pre-existing conditions might receive special treatment. The President of Madagascar is reported to have announced that his country has found its own cure for COVID-19 and has ordered schools also to reopen. The West is still in a trial-and-error mode, and why shouldn’t we experiment as well? Africa fought and survived Ebola without lockdowns and we can do even better this time.”

Speaking in tandem, but insisting that there must be world approved laboratories to come up with remedies, a renowned pharmacist, Victor Amuta, chairman, VIVA Chemist Limited, warned that Nigeria should not, out of desperation, begin to concoct anything in the name of COVID-19 cure as that would prove detrimental.

Reacting to an observation that Nigeria must not depend on Europe, America or China but to seek ways to find remedies for the pandemic, Amuta said Nigeria has not got the needed discipline for manufacturing and dispensing certain pharmaceutical products unlike what obtains in other climes.

“Medical/pharmaceutical scientists all over the world are making efforts to find a cure. They are not hoping to use herbal remedies. High level research efforts are being conducted in state-of-the-art laboratories in many first world countries.

“Nigeria is a third world black African country where ethical Pharmaceutical products are sold in open markets with the connivance of government authorities,” Amuta said.

“What do you want Pharmacists in Nigeria to say? We should manufacture crude herbal concoctions for treatment of coronavirus, to please semi-illiterate uninformed Nigerian masses, so that they will praise us?

“Pharmacists are trained to research and manufacture ethical Pharmaceutical products in standard world class laboratories. Pharmacists in Nigeria are well-trained professionals; some of us were trained in the best universities in the first world countries. Some of us who trained in Nigeria also get out to first world countries and are accepted to practise pharmacy in such climes,” he said.

According to him, “We are not herbalists and will not practise alchemy/herbal medicine to please uninformed Nigerians. Informed educated Nigerians know that we need world approved laboratories to produce ethical Pharmaceuticals. No individual pharmacist can set up such laboratories.

“I am a very well trained pharmacist and I am confident that I can hold my own anywhere in the world as far as pharmacy practice is concerned. Many Pharmacists in Nigeria including me are registered members of Federation of International Pharmacists, and attend the meetings and follow the proceedings at meetings. Pharmacy is a profession which is controlled by international standards.

It is not about what obtains in Nigeria where controlled drugs are sold in open markets!”