Probe tests, group tells French Consulate

Gbenga Omokhunu, Abuja

INTERNATIONAL Human Rights and Accountability groups (The Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resource Centre), Cornerhouse, GlobalWitness and Re:common) have in joint petitions, called the attention of the French Consulate in Nigeria, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Director General, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to the reported attempt by French medical experts to test COVID-19 vaccines on Africans and the claim that antiretroviral drugs have been previously tested on the continent.

The groups urged the Ministry, agency and Consulate to urgently investigate the matter, make public the findings of their investigations, bring culprits to justice, halt any such process that may be in action and protect Nigerians in particular and Africans in general from being used as vaccines testing rats.

In a statement issued on Thursday in Lagos by HEDA’s Chairman, Mr Olanrewaju Suraju, amid the State’s lockdown to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, HEDA said it was also requesting under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, 2011, information from the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to determine whether antiretroviral drugs were truly tested in Nigeria by French Doctors or pharmaceutical companies by obtaining details of HIV/AIDS drugs and or vaccines manufactured by any French firm and which were certified by NAFDAC for trial and testing in Nigeria from January 2002 to December 2004.

According to the statement: “In a recent development widely circulated by international media outlets, particularly Aljazeera in a publication of April 4, 2020 titled: “Racism row as French doctors suggest virus vaccine test in Africa” and which was also circulated on Twitter, two French doctors (Jean-Paul Mira and Camille Locht) who were interviewed on a French Television Channel, LCI, indicated the tendency of testing the BCG tuberculosis vaccine in Africa on Africans to discover if the vaccine can be used to treat COVID-19. More saddening, the interview also indicated that the practice of using Africans as rats or guinea pigs to test vaccines is not new to the French.”