Last week, officials at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) announced that health authorities in Guinea-Bissau had moved to halt a controversial study which would have used unvaccinated infants as lab rats. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), however, insisted the trial was still on.
That wasn’t all US health authorities had to say. In a bizarre outburst, the HHS told Futurism that the Africa CDC was a “fake and powerless organization,” and insisted that it was “not a reliable source” for information. During a press meeting on Thursday, director-general of the Africa CDC Jean Kaseya hit back.
“Let me tell you: we are not an NGO,” Kaseya said defiantly. “We are not a UN organization. We are the convening power in Africa. The mandate [is] given to us by all 55 African heads of state and government.”
“People can meet in the US, people can meet in Europe,” Kaseya continued, likely referencing leaked emails between HHS officials and Danish researchers to push the vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau. “If we are not there, they are wasting their time.”
Kaseya also made it clear that no government has the right to impose experiments on the people of Guinea-Bissau.
“Africa CDC is respecting and supporting the sovereignty of the country,” the official continued. “It’s not Africa CDC that will say, ‘this clinical trial will take place or not.’ It’s not any other international body that will come to say, ‘this clinical trial will take place or not.’ It’s not a foreign country that will come and say, ‘this one will take place.’ It’s the sovereignty of the country.”
Though the HHS evidently thinks it has the power to push dangerous vaccines experiments on African countries, the reality isn’t so simple. According to the Africa CDC’s guidelines, any vaccine trial that doesn’t receive a written authorization from the country’s National Medicines Regulatory Authority is illegal. Likewise, it must have approval from the National Ethics Committee, as well as a local institutional review board at each site where the trial is to take place.
On top of all that, any trial must also have explicit approval from the country’s Ministry of Health — granting officials in Guinea-Bissau the power to functionally veto any experiment the government doesn’t support.
Kaseya emphasized the importance of exercising sovereignty over African public health. “Our vision is not coming from Western countries,” he said. “Our vision is coming from Africa, shaped by African leadership, based on African realities.”
In an interview with the Guardian, Abdulhammad Babatunde, a doctor and global health researcher in Nigeria, said that it’s “very important to fund research that Africans actually want.”
“Africans want to solve Africa’s problems, not satisfy the curiosity of the funders,” Babatunde said, referring to the HHS, which announced the $1.6 million funding package for the study in December.
Once up and running, the vaccine trial would have given 7,000 newborn children a vaccine for hepatitis B, while 7,000 more infants in the control group wouldn’t receive the vaccine.
As the Guardian notes, nearly one in five adults and 11 percent of children in Guinea-Bissau have hepatitis B — which carries a significant risk for debilitating illness and death. In such a health environment, there’s no justification for purposefully leaving infants unvaccinated for any length of time.
“This is not acceptable,” Babatunde told the paper. “To prevent things like the Tuskegee study and others, the control group has to get the standard of care, and the intervention group should get [potentially] better care.”
Asked whether the HHS’s comments would affect future collaboration with Africa CDC, Kaseya said he’s putting the strange episode behind him.
“I was briefed that they don’t know anything about any statement against Africa CDC,” he said. “I could tell you about a statement that could be somewhere, made by someone. But officials from HHS just yesterday — senior people — said they don’t know anything about the statement. I trust them, I’ve closed the chapter.”
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