Madagascar’s COVID-19 ‘Cure’ Raises Pan-Africanism Pride and Slams Agents of Western Imperialism

by Alagi Yorro Jallow.
Fatoumatta: In the area of medical science, Africa has plenty to learn from Cuba. The International Pedro Kouri Institute of Tropical Diseases in Havana is respected in tropical medicine and epidemiology studies as well as medical international. The Pedro Kouri institute has a tiny budget as compared to a single research hospital at Harvard University or in the University of Oxford, but has conducted crucial basic science research, helped develop novel vaccines, trained thousands of researchers from Cuba and from around the world a drug developed by the institute, interferon alfa-2b, was used together with anti-viral HIV drugs to treat Covid-19 patients in Wuhan, on an experimental basis.
Fatoumatta: Africa is so fashioned “Pan Africanism” reaction to Madagascar’s discovery of African herbal cure to Covid-19 cannot be one of the empty nTo dismiss Covid-19 as fake, without rigorous inquiry, is preposterous. To launch a herbal cure, and market it globally with the rigor of evidence-based efficacy testing is both commendable and pride for the African continent.
Fatoumatta: Meaningful Panafricansm means hosting and funding robust Covid-19 prevention and treatment responses, using African money led by African scientists. Africa is so fashioned “Pan Africanism” reaction to Madagascar’s discovery of African herbal cure to Covid-19 cannot be one of the empty narratives, conspiracies, and counter-narratives as well as “the alternative truths, truthers” examine roots of conspiracy theories.
Fatoumatta: The whole world is frantic about defeating Coronavirus and reopening their lives. Is that the song we hear from Madagascar? An artemisia plant, a bottle of artemisia tonic and boxes of Covid-Organics, the branded artemisia products that Madagascar discovered as a treatment for the Coronavirus. Madagascar is the inventor, creator, and manufacturer of the Madagascar magic herbal drink named COVID-ORGANICS, which prevents and cures Coronavirus.
Africa’s youngest President is Madagascar’s President Andry Rajoelina, a former disc jockey. He is 45 years old, and he first became a Head of State at the age of 34 in 2009 through a coup: President Rafoelina has placed Africa on the world stage. He told global media that “Clinical trials of artemisia-based injections on new Covid-19 patients will start next week,” said President Andry Rajoelina, saying that any criticism of the plant-based remedy must stop, according to Radio France International’s correspondent in Antananarivo. The President called for people to continue following measures put in place to stop the spread of the virus. However, much of Rajoelina’s address focused on artemisia. He talked about increasing production of the plant and setting up a factory to process it over the next month. “This plant can treat lots of diseases. If we do not act quickly, other researchers will overtake us,” said President Rajoelina in an interview with the global media. Fatoumatta: Authorities in other African countries have expressed interest in using artemisia in the fight against Covid-19. Several African governments have been in touch with Madagascar’s government and had despatched an airplane to pick up supplies of artemisia.
Desperate times require desperate measures; bad diseases need tough drugs. To escape the COVID-19 disaster, what people take are as varied as the tribes of babel. For some, it is Vitamin C and chloroquine; for some others, hydroxychloroquine or even ivermectin is it. Others recommended Aloe vera, carrots, black seeds, ginger, and honey treatment. Do not judge the Malagasy cure for Covid-19 disease. Africa may be holding her homegrown solution to the scourge of Coronavirus. After all, our medical husbands have stridently told us always to use ‘alcohol-based sanitizer’ and soap to purify our palms.
Fatoumatta: People in power also do things that suggest their taking bad kinds of stuff either to cheat, forget things, and get going or to terrorize us. They misbehave and insist we must not talk about bad manners and about how badly our ‘doctors’ are treating us. We should always remember that we are “not medical scientists.” Madagascar President, who tried it, you remember what he was told? They are too drunk with power to know that William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Act II, Scene II) contains at least one example of how drama was used to attack deleterious malaria, the scourge of the 16th century England. Because of a slave tremble and is in ‘apparent delirium,’ Shakespeare makes sure he is offered wine to relieve him of his ailment: “…He is in his fit now and does not talk after the wisest. He shall taste of my bottle…Open your mouth: this will shake your shaking . . . if all the wine in my bottle will recover him, I will help his ague.” Ague was that era’s English name for malaria.
Imagine Shakespeare, an ordinary dramatist, jumping into a medical discourse. He even wrote prescriptions and made his patient drink his drug. He did not know the limit of his wisdom, knowledge, and expertise. Moreover, worse, medical history and historians use him as their epidemiological compass. If he were in Africa, we would have given him the Madagascar cure for Covid -19 treatment. We would have reminded him of the fiction he writes and cremated his poems and plays – then use the ash to appease the gods of our arrogance.
Fatoumatta: Madagascar’s response to discovering a cure for the Covid-19 sample of the herbal medicine of organics Malagasy remedy for the Covid-19 is not unique. It be might differ a little, but it is in the family of flu and common cold viruses. The magic drink herbal traditional medicines have been working to reduce the severity of flu and common cold for ages, according to Dr. Jerome Munyangi. This traditional African Covid-19 medicine has also been known to keep the flu away, according to Dr. Jerome Munyangi. Why are there no longer any covid-19 patients in hospitals of Madagascar, and why so far there have been zero deaths due to covid-19 in Madagascar?
The African Union bloc said it was in contact with Madagascar to obtain technical data regarding the safety and efficiency of artemisia used to treat Covid-19, according to a statement.
“It was agreed that the member state would furnish the African Union with necessary details regarding the herbal remedy,” the AU announced.
Fatoumatta: The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) would “review the scientific data gathered so far on the safety and efficacy,” the AU added. Frank van der Kooy, who led the research on artemisia and treatment of HIV at Leiden University and the University of Basel, told RFI that he could not continue this work due to a lack of funding. In contrast, research on its use against SARS must be “cautiously interpreted.”
“At the moment, we are therefore not sure if artemisia annua/afra will be active against Covid-19, but I do believe it warrants conducting clinical trials, which in turn needs funding,” said van der Kooy, who currently works at North-West University in South Africa.
The WHO is careful not to rule out the possible use of artemisia as a treatment for Covid-19, saying it should be tested for its efficacy and adverse side effects.
“Africans deserve to use medicines tested to the same standards as people in the rest of the world,” the WHO said in a statement published on Monday. “Even if therapies are derived from traditional practice and natural, establishing their efficacy and safety through rigorous clinical trials is critical.”
“Many plants and substances are being proposed without the minimum requirements and evidence of quality, safety, and efficacy. The use of products to treat Covid-19, which have not been robustly investigated, can put people in danger, giving a false sense of security and distracting them from hand washing and physical distancing, which are cardinal in Covid-19 prevention,” the WHO added. Senegalese scientist Professor Daouda Ndiaye epidemiologist and head of the parasitology-mycology service of the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar confirmed the effectiveness of the Malagasy Covid -19 remedy to clinical trial evaluation to the novel Covid-19. Professor Ndiaye said in an interview without the Senegalese media that clinical trials of the Malagasy herbal cure’s effectiveness in labs proved satisfactorily following rigorous scientific inquiry.
Fatoumatta: What drives our drivers is the pandemic sleaze that flows from the disease. The sharks are eating the small fishes to live big. Madagascar’s President Andry Rajoelina gave a long, televised address last weekend praising the benefits of artemisia, a herbal remedy increasingly promoted as a treatment for Covid-19. It is also gaining traction in other African countries. However, the World Health Organization has warned earlier that it must be tested for efficacy and adverse side effects. Artemisia’s use in treating malaria is beneficial in the fight against the deadly parasite, although some raise questions about the exact nature of the treatment. However, its use in combatting malaria does not necessarily mean it will be effective against Covid-19.
Fatoumatta: Pan Africanism stance cannot be driven by empty rhetoric from religious leaders and politicians, including confessed Covid-19 skeptics and leaders like John Mafugi, the Tanzanian President. Africa and Africans cannot be instilling African pride when our mass testing program is solely dependent on defective kits imported from China when Africa cannot produce basic medical essentials like masks and PPEs when corruption has eaten away the core of our public healthcare system and research institutions.
Pan Africanism should not be the branch for politicians to conveniently lurch onto when they have no answers to difficult questions in morality, science, and public policy. Pan Africanism means self-reliance. Self-discovery. Such reliance and discovery include a homegrown capacity for the scientific method and respect for scientific research by religious and political leaders as well as those greedy capitalist pigs.
Fatoumatta: The core issue for Africa is not whether the Coronavirus was manufactured in a toilet or China. Those are issues of global accountability and security that will be addressed in other fora. Immediate and imminent danger is the risk posed by the Covid-19. The critical response from African heads government and Presidents is to quickly develop knowledge and understanding that will be used to define mitigation measures to protect populations in Africa from this deadly pathogen. Without a vaccine, Covid-19 may be with us for a long time to come. Just like the seasonal flu. Well-grounded scientific knowledge is what will inform our plans going forward, without necessarily reacting to methods formulated for the West.
“We are moving towards the use of artemisia Covid-19 organics. On our side on the scientific level, our light is green We are going to organize ourselves to see how we can reproduce the same formula or order the remedy to give it to the Senegalese,” says Daouda Ndiaye on Senegalese national media.
Fatoumatta: We need to seek ways to domesticate testing kits so that Africa has control over the reliability of the testing process. A robust research architecture that harnesses the continent’s research capacity towards vaccine development and testing. We, therefore, mistrust the governments we set up, and the governments themselves are just like us – too trusting of everyone else except their people, and mostly clueless about the potential of catastrophes and how to respond to them in order to save the most people. We do not task our best minds to do research and provide homegrown solutions because we expect others will come to our aid whenever calamity strikes. They helped us during the Ethiopian famine, didn’t they?
Fatoumatta: In the current coronavirus crisis, for instance, other countries are perfectly capable of coming to entice our best brains to go to their research labs and cook up the necessary medicines and vaccines. In contrast, we shall be content with facilitating our best and the brightest to access funding for trials of vaccines developed by others. The same way we facilitated our best brains to become distributors of condoms during the HIV/AIDs crisis.
Fatoumatta: In all these, we exhibit the best traits of followers, not leaders, and we seem to be happy about it. The greatest lesson Africans should take from the coronavirus crisis is that only the most paranoid survive. We must refrain from populist leadership and imperialism bully.