Category: Editorial

The Ebola epidemic raging through west Africa has highlighted not only the terrible state of the region’s public health infrastructure but also the low priority given worldwide to developing treatments for tropical diseases. Six months into the outbreak, with the official death toll rising quickly past 1,000 and unofficial estimates much higher, health authorities are only now beginning to evaluate the pipeline of medicines that might be available to treat or prevent infection.

The most striking aspect of this pipeline is how many experimental candidates there are; at least 15 Ebola drugs and a dozen vaccines have been developed as far as pre-clinical (animal) testing. Scientifically, Ebola is an easier target than viruses such as HIV and flu because it does not mutate so rapidly. Unfortunately, however, none of the candidates has been put through the far more expensive process of clinical trials to assess safety and efficacy against Ebola.

The US government has been the chief funder of research so far – more as a precaution in case bioterrorists use Ebola as a weapon than out of a commitment to African health. A global partnership between governments, charities and the pharmaceutical industry is needed to push the most promising candidates through clinical development.

These may not arrive in time for the current epidemic but could be stockpiled for future outbreaks, which experts say are certain to occur. As with the new antibiotics needed urgently to tackle microbial resistance, there is little financial justification for companies to develop such drugs without some sort of advance purchase commitment or other market incentive from the public sector.

But the immediate issue is who should have access to the extremely limited supplies of experimental medicines likely to be available within the next few weeks. The World Health Organisation held a meeting on Monday at which scientists and ethicists agreed unanimously that untested new drugs could be given to Ebola patients, subject to certain conditions such as informed consent and transparency about the outcome of treatment. While that was a welcome decision, the WHO regrettably failed to combine it with advice on who should receive any available medicines.

There is an overwhelming argument for giving them first to healthcare workers. Doctors and nurses need all the support they can get to fight the disease and help patients under appalling conditions. They should receive every incentive, from prompt payment of salaries to priority access to medication. The epidemic will be brought under control more quickly if people who think they may be infected know they can go to an adequately staffed hospital, rather than hiding away at home, or in the bush, where they are more likely to pass on the disease. Though patients will not receive specific anti-Ebola drugs, they are more likely to survive with hospital care that ensures they are well hydrated and as comfortable as possible.

The Ebola virus is one of the nastiest germs known to humanity, in its lethality and in the horrible way it kills, but we should not regard it as an invincible superbug. Its biology and genetics are well known after almost 40 years of scientific study, and about 40 previous outbreaks in central Africa have been stopped. While the present epidemic is the largest and most complex on record – and, lest we forget, by far the most devastating in its effect on affected communities – it too can be beaten through a combination of infection control, contact tracing and local solidarity. Yes, a supply of safe and effective medicines would help enormously, and with sufficient political will we should have one in time for the next Ebola epidemic, but it is not the key to victory.

– Financial Times

•A great historian is gone!

For a long time, his name has been associated with the study of history. Many Nigerians who studied history whether at the secondary or university level, or who pored over material in the course of their studies that had historical bearing, came across his name. So gloriously intrusive and universal was his name that when he died on August 9, it was hard not to feel, even at 85, that a man who represented a phenomenon had passed painfully from this earth.

Professor J. F. Ade Ajayi was not what can be described as the pioneer of the study of history in Nigeria, nay Africa. Professor Kenneth Dike takes that glory, and that has been well documented. But in terms of what is described as African history for Africans and from the perspective of the African, Professor Ade Ajayi takes the glory.

Much of the way the history of Africa is researched, sourced, documented and written derives from his creative and prodigious genius. But he was not only a scholar of extraordinary stature, he was also an accomplished educationist cresting his career in that wise as vice-chancellor.

He was at the helm of what came to be known as the Ibadan School of History. He brought into the study of African history a rigour of cultural sensitivity and Africanism, thereby asserting the intellectual pride and individuality of the African. This was a cut away from the Eurocentricism of African studies that predated him. That perspective saw Africans as footnotes in their story. It was a servile world view that starred Africans as savages and benighted warriors whose only way to civilised existence shone through the ideas and lifestyles of their colonial masters.

Prof. Ade Ajayi de-colonised the African narrative. He did not live in a vacuum in this effort. He thrived against the background of the nationalist struggles and the preponderance of writings of Negritude. It was a time to show the African as a people away from the tether of Europe. The Ibadan School where he reigned encapsulated that verve.

His main area of research focused on his native Yorubaland, where he bustled with intellectual curiosity and discoveries. As a historian, he adopted a dialectic rubric, so he did not look at events as isolations but as parts of bigger historical forces, x-raying societies in broader and deeper ways, including the interstices of cultures, religion, work activities and other ways of life. These were reflected in such masterpieces as Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century and Christian Missions in Nigeria, 1841-1891. He was not an intellectual lone ranger. He was a collaborationist and an editor.  He co-edited A thousand Years of West African History, as well as History of West Africa with Michael Crowther.

He was born in Ikole-Ekiti on May, 26, 1929 and began his education at St. Paul’s School, Ikole, when he was five years old. He benefited from a scholarship from the Ikole Ekiti Native Authority to pursue his secondary education at Igbobi College in Lagos. He had the choice, when he gained admission to the University of Ibadan on a course of study. He opted for history over Latin and English. He later proceeded to Leicester University. He became a research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, London, between 1957 and1958.

Prof Ade Ajayi was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos, a position he left in controversial circumstances because of the tempestuous Ali-Must-Go riots that rocked educational institutions across the country in 1978.  He had his share of awards, including the Distinguished Africanist Award by the African Studies Association and Honorary Fellow of School of Oriental and African Studies.

PRESIDENT OBAMA insists that it is in the U.S. interest to maintain a strategic partnership with Egypt’s new authoritarian government, while Secretary of State John F. Kerry keeps claiming that strongman Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi actually heads a democracy. So the reality check provided by Human Rights Watch this week is particularly worthy of attention. According to a meticulous, year-long investigation carried out by the group, the administration’s ally in Cairo is guilty of the “world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history” and deserves prosecution for crimes against humanity.

Don’t expect the U.N. Human Rights Council or the Europeans marching against Israel to notice, but the massacre staged by Egyptian security forces on Aug. 14, 2013, in Cairo’s Rabaa Square far exceeds, in its wanton use of force and calculated slaughter of women and children, any action by Israel during the recent fighting in Gaza. According to the Human Rights Watch investigation, at least 817 people, and probably more than 1,000, were killed when police and army troops advanced into the square from each of its five main entrances, backed by armored personnel carriers, bulldozers and snipers posted on rooftops.

Tens of thousands of people, including many women and children, were camped in the square in protest of the military’s July 3 coup against the elected government of Mohamed Morsi. Twelve hours later the area was littered with bodies and its mosque and hospital were on fire. In addition, security forces detained more than 800 people, whom they beat, tortured and in some cases summarily executed, according to witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch.

Perhaps the most shocking finding of the report is that senior Egyptian leaders anticipated and planned on the mass casualties. Interior Ministry officials told human rights workers nine days before the operation that they expected up to 3,500 deaths. A year later, authorities deny any wrongdoing and have not charged a single police or army officer in connection with the killings. On the contrary, a monument celebrating the security forces has been erected in Rabaa Square. Human Rights Watch’s lawyers believe that more than a dozen senior officials who ordered or oversaw the operation should be investigated for crimes against humanity, including Gen. Sissi.

More people died on Aug. 14 in Rabaa Square than in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 or in any mass killing of protestors since then, the human rights group reckons. In the last 12 months the most repressive regime seen in Egypt in decades has taken hold; thousands of members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood have been handed death sentences, while secular journalists and leaders of Egypt’s pro-democracy movement have been imprisoned on trumped-up charges.

The Obama administration nevertheless treats the architect of the slaughter, Gen. Sissi, as a valued partner rather than the pariah he should be. The White House seems to believe that its unprincipled embrace of the regime and cynical promotion of the falsehood that it is “restoring democracy” will advance broader U.S. interests in the Middle East. It’s a bad bet. As Human Rights Watch President Kenneth Roth put it, “Egypt will not move forward until it comes to terms with this bloody stain on its history.”

– Washington Post