Impending catastrophe: Lack of preparedness for COVID-19 second wave

COVID-19

By Jide Osuntokun

 

Anybody who has been watching the thousands of deaths caused by the coronavirus pandemic in India and other countries in South Asia and South Eastern Asian countries such as Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia and even Thailand cannot but be worried about what will happen in Africa and particularly in our country if we were to experience the same phenomenon. With our situation of total unpreparedness, we can only hope and pray that we will be spared the consequences of our lack of adequate preparation.

What is happening in India, the centre of vaccines manufacturing in the world has ramifications for the developing countries that receive vaccines pro bono from the World Health Organization (WHO) because of our impecunious situation caused by stealing of national resources and mismanagement and poor governance in most of African countries where state capture by a few well-connected local and or external forces is the order of the day. This has invariably benefited the ruling and colluding elite. If Nigeria were well governed, we should not be waiting for handouts from the WHO or any external bodies. But alas, this is the situation in Africa with the exception of South Africa which has the infrastructure to manufacture on license, vaccines against coronavirus. I suppose when we witness the oncoming catastrophe in our country, we will probably run to China for the vaccines of Sinopharm which has proved totally ineffective in Brazil. While on the issue of Chinese vaccines, I am totally confused about how the Chinese have managed to control the spread of the coronavirus pandemic which started in Wuhan China. Apart from the initial closure of areas affected by the virus in China, there has been no other extraordinary measures taken by the Chinese. Some have suggested that the draconian measure taken by the Chinese could only have been adopted by a Communist country with its centralized planning, policing and control of all levers of power. Whatever the Chinese have done, one must admire them. The Chinese economy in the last year has grown by 12% which is incredible when compared with the negative nose-diving growth of western economies. This is why some cynics are saying the coronavirus pandemic was unleashed on the world as part of Chinese strategy to be the numero uno among the world powers. Whatever the case may be, the Indian situation probably indicates the fault lines in democracy in a large and highly populated country where perhaps strong governments are needed rather than parliamentary debates which are the hall mark of democratic governance. In our case in Nigeria, we suffer from the double jeopardy of weak governance and autocracy and state capture by a small ethnic and religious cohort.

When we got the first batch of Covax vaccines from the WHO, states were given their shares according apparently on the basis of incidence of the disease and ready infrastructure to administer the vaccines. Lagos, the entry point of the coronavirus to Nigeria got half a million doses of the Astra Zeneca vaccines for its close to 20 million inhabitants. Other states got measly amount from the two million doses of the vaccines.

Special allocations were made to members of the armed forces, of course these were for officers only while the rank and file would have to wait until the next batch. I don’t know if the police got any allocations. The allocations to the states were given to the higher members of the bureaucracy, state and federal, who got the jabs in their arms and allocations were made to the judiciary and the federal and state legislatures.

To my surprise, nothing was given to teachers, at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Now the schools including universities have been asked to open. What will happen to teachers and professors and the students in their cramped dormitories, halls of residence and classrooms? What about the old professors who should have been part of those to receive priority consideration ab initio? It is of course true that the number of vaccines given to us as a country was too small. This two million total allocation to Nigeria’s 200 million amounts to one hundredth of our need.

No one should blame the WHO for not giving us more. It can only give us out what it had. In fact, the WHO had to blackmail the rich world which was hoarding the vaccines with the USA and Canada having more vaccines than they would ever need. The rich country did what was in the interest of their people. It is natural to protect yourself before thinking of others. Even the Holy scriptures say love your neighbors as yourselves not more than yourselves. It was when the rich countries realized that no one would be safe until all are safe before they climbed down from their high horses of vaccines nationalism and began to accede to WHO request to help the poor people of the world. It is of course a pity that Nigeria and the rest of Africa wear the badge of poverty as an honor.  But in reality, Nigeria should not belong to the category of poor nations if we had managed our resources well. Countries that are members of OPEC are generally not considered poor. It was a herculean task persuading the rest of the world that Nigeria was a poor country when we were campaigning for debt forgiveness while suffering from the debt overhang. Unfortunately, this present government has taken us back to debt peonage where our children and grandchildren will be domiciled even when we are gone.

Another problem we have in Nigeria is vaccines hesitancy. Some of our clerics, Muslim and Christian are even telling their flock that coronavirus only affect sinners and unbelievers and frown at wearing masks. Some illiterates are also saying it is a disease of the rich and affluent and the preaching about physical distancing, masking and avoiding of large congregations are falling on deaf ears in a country where poverty has driven our people to churches and mosques of charlatans who are exploiting and deceiving the gullible people.

I of course know that the African Union is rumored to have placed orders for 400 million of the Johnson and Johnson vaccines even though South Africa has previously rejected them on the grounds of their ineffectiveness to combat the coronavirus variant in their country. This variant has spread to the Southern, Central and Eastern African regions. It is only a matter of time before it spreads to West Africa including Nigeria if it has not done that already. Even if the 400 million of Johnson and Johnson vaccines which require only one jab rather than the two jabs of Astra Zeneca jabs are delivered hopefully by next year, one wonders if they will work since they did not work against the South African variant. The date of delivery means we will probably all be dead by that time as predicted by the Anglican Bishop of Cape Town in South Africa.

There is the issue of those who have already received the first jab of Astra Zeneca vaccines and waiting for the second jab which India has now embargoed because of the surging coronavirus in their country. It’s a case of charity beginning at home. There is no scientific backing for mixing vaccines. One just hopes that the Nigerian government would plead with the United States and the British governments to release some of the stockpiles of the Astra Seneca vaccines in their possession.

The science of vaccines production is not totally alien to our country. In the 1970s vaccines of one type or the other against small pox, trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness and other diseases were produced in Vom on the Plateau. The current coronavirus vaccines may be different but certainly we could move from our previous knowledge of vaccines production to the new sophisticated computer driven ones if the resources were made available for researchers and if the infrastructure were kept up to date. But like everything we do in our import-dependent country, we have abandoned even our previous knowledge for imports in every aspect of our lives. We are now importing New Jersey cows to produce milk when in fact in the 1950s and 1960s, we were drinking fresh cow milk in Ibadan!

Our problems are legion. On one hand we are begging foreign countries to come and help us with our self-inflicted wounds of banditry, herders war against farmers, jihadist terrorism, secessionist agitation and demands for wholesale restructuring and now we are going to have to plead for vaccines! Unfortunately, we have no choice. This is the cross road in which we now find ourselves and we don’t know where to turn to and remaining at this crossroads may be terminal for our existence. I shudder to imagine what will happen to us unless we make haste while the sun shines.

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