|
Please Let The Children Live By The picture is saddening, a father bearing his child that is stricken with the crippling polio disease. Yet as loving and courageous as any father, he allows – "I am optimistic that my son will be someone important, the leader of this village someday, polio or no polio… he lowered his son to the ground, the boy’s legs buckled, and his body sank to the ground, where he sat silently at his father’s feet".
Who is it with a heart that aches not for this little boy?
This report cleared the haze for me about the issues of the disease of polio and the vaccine to defeat it that appears to have been politicized and religionized, to the detriment of infants and children, the hardest hit of the polio disease. I had glanced over titles of articles on the issue of polio and its vaccine and never really reading the articles; they were, the ones I recall, mostly write-ups by MDs on polio and its vaccines - health matters that I thought were better left for physicians and healthcare experts to deal with. But see how wrong I was, not to have concerned myself about this matter to at least join in sounding alarm, however loud or inaudible.
I did read an article by Mr. Wada Nas, where he expressed misgivings about polio vaccines sent to the north of Nigeria to vaccinate northern children. Whatever was the content of Mr. Nas’ article and its particulars that I cannot now recall, it was my feeling that he laid out a cogent argument for himself on the vaccines and the north of Nigeria. But I had not factored in the interest of children in my thoughts then, and that was wrong and unfortunate.
I realized how really wrong was my disposition upon encountering the report whose parts introduced this piece above. Who would not be saddened, pained by the sight of a child stricken with a condition over which he or she has no control? Who would have patience, or contain anger in the knowledge that the condition with which a child is stricken was preventable, and that nothing was done to save the child simply because of political and religious mistrust and suspicion?
As to Mr. Nas’ article referenced earlier, whatever it was….particulars and all, it now hardly holds water to me, knowing that there is a child somewhere who could have been helped with the vaccine against which he had argued.
It is dangerous when people mix science and politics. It is even worse mixing science and religion. And in this day and age, there ought to be no room for mere suspicion of science and its product as a way of making public policy. Science lends itself to proof and that is it. Instead of mere suspicion, you look for proof, by test, test, test…..that is all, test at home, tests abroad, with dispatch, so as to save time and save lives.
Why is South Africa ravaged by HIV/AIDs today? South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, a man with no known science background, injected guerrilla politics into the science of HIV/AIDs, and by that he wasted years of prospective cure and stoppage of high HIV/AIDs transmission especially from mother to child. Mbeki, even with millions of South Africans dieing carried on baseless debate and argument with HIV/AIDs specialists over what is HIV and what is AIDs, and whether the two were separable. HIV not treated develops to full blown AIDs; HIV and AIDs are treated as one and the same. How do I know? I am on the Board of Directors of a health organization, one of whose physicians is a world-renowned HIV/AIDs specialist, and I have sat in some of her lectures, some of which I arranged myself on behalf of African dignitaries, Ikemba Odumegwu-Ojukwu being one of them.
Now, even a medical doctor has joined politicians and religious leaders in the campaign to stop vaccinating children against polio. One Dr. Ahmed Abati, a physician cum religious law expert was quoted saying that he did not trust the test results that cleared the polio vaccines. He is also quoted as saying that the U.S. motivation for vaccinations in the north of Nigeria was to promote infertility drugs and that the U.S. wants to depopulate the third world for its hegemony. This would be a clear case of crime against humanity if in fact the U.S. has designs as expressed by Dr. Abati. But I can say in this instance, that there is not truth to Dr. Abati’s claim. Again, science lends itself to proof; there need not be baseless claims, instead test, test test.
An Iman, Sheik Mohammed added to the fray, saying, "Muslims, we hate America…..how can we trust this nation, especially when it helps buy polio vaccine and then puts drops of the vaccine in our children’s mouth?"
What truth is in Dr. Abati’s and Iman Mohammed’s claims? The vaccines in question were not manufactured in America. The vaccines were not manufactured by Americans or by an American company. Iman Mohammed was only right by half; he was right that America bought the vaccines. America bought the vaccines from a French pharmaceutical company called Avents Pasteur.
Could Nigerian government have purchased the vaccines or better yet, could the same government have developed an environment that prevented the polio virus from thriving? Where has all the wealth of the nation gone? Nigerian citizens are left pointing accusing fingers and suspicious of assistance from without. And where is the big time political general Ibrahim Babangida, that was complaining not long ago about young beggars? Does he not understand that it is a natural/logical progression – at least in that part of the world, from debilitation from polio to begging in the street? Babangida is richer than all of his section of the country, in fact the entire country, Nigeria. The man could have bought the polio vaccines and may be we would not have all this suspicion and accusing fingers going on, while children’s lives remain in danger.
I say again, it is a dangerous world when religion and politics get injected into science. It is worse in the part of the world worst hit by the malady in question, a part of the world, Nigeria, where emotion always rules over everything else, a place where public policy is made based on emotion.
Get on with it people, take the vaccines, samples and all to a lab in Lagos, Abuja or wherever, test and ascertain the efficacy of the drug only on polio and save the children. Turns out the vaccines were already examined by WHO, a university lab in Lagos and by a Muslim pathologist, Abdulmunimi Rafindadi in three laboratories in northern Nigeria. Yet Dr. Abati said he doubts the validity of the independent tests on the vaccine.
Now who needs to be satisfied so that polio vaccine can be administered to infants and children in north Nigeria, ready victims of polio disease? Whose mind needs to be disabused, so infants and children could receive the vaccine they need to survive and live and lead healthy life? Would it be Dr. Abati that needs to be satisfied or his mind disabused? Dr. Abati, strong and sturdy looking, whose child was seen in the picture of the report I read, frolicking about his compound. Or should the poor and wretched looking man seen in the same report bearing his polio crippled son be allowed to decide what is good for his son? What has the U.S. war in Afghanistan or Iraq got to do with preventing children from dieing from polio in the north of Nigeria?
American Drs. Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin invented and developed the polio vaccine in the early 50s, 1953 to be exact. The oral polio vaccine, now a controversy in the north of Nigeria, was developed by Dr. Sabin and has been in use in America since 1960. Polio is a thing of the past in the western hemisphere, thanks to the vaccines. Why is it difficult to apply same remedy for prevention and cure in north of Nigeria or anywhere in that country where polio disease exists?
There must be in Abuja, Nigeria, political representatives of the areas of north of Nigeria worst hit by polio. Now is the time for them to go home to their constituents and tell them to think more about the health of their children than what the Iman has to say about America and Iraq and Afghanistan, so that their children may live. Such should be the right politics at this time, politics to let the children live – healthy and strong.
Feb 2004
|