Rage on social media after French doctors proposed coronavirus vaccine test on Africans
The 'no to vaccine testing in Africa' image has been shared widely on Twitter
The hashtag, ‘AfricansAreNotLabRats’ has garnered more than 47, 000 tweets and topped Twitter trends as some people are aggressively calling for a united African front to kick against the proposal by two French doctors to use Africans as ‘lab rats’ for an alleged coronavirus vaccine.
Read full article Amidst all the fear, panic and scepticism about a viable vaccine rearing its head soon to fight the pandemic which doesn’t discriminate against any group of persons, the two doctors proposed the use of Africans for the coronavirus vaccine trials.
According to Dr Jean Paul Mira, head of Resuscitation Department at Cochin Hospital in Paris, the use of Africans for the trials could be justified because so far the continent has been unimpressive in the fight against the coronavirus.
He is quoted to have said in a viral TV debate sighted by GhanaWeb, “If I can be provocative, shouldn’t we do this study in Africa? Where there are no masks, no treatment, no reanimation, a little bit as is done in some AIDS studies where they used prostitutes to test somethings because they know they are highly exposed and they don’t protect themselves…”
“What do you think?” a question he directed to his colleague, Dr Camille Locht who in turn, responded in the affirmative.
He said, “You are right, we are thinking of a parallel study in Africa to use this same kind of approach with the BCG Placebos. I think there is a request for a proposal, I don’t know if it is out yet or not and we will in fact think seriously about that too…”
The interview which was translated to English has been heavily lampooned by several Africans who have not been hesitant to label the utterances by the doctors as ‘racist and unfair.’
“We were here tweeting I stand with Paris blah blah blah when we could have “stood” with African countries going through worst things. Now the same people we stood by want to use us as guinea pigs. When are we going to learn!...,” one of the several tweets read.
Another questioned the rationale behind the motive, “It makes no sense to start testing vaccines in a continent with just 7k+ cases, leaving behind their countries. Africa is not a lab and we are not Guinea pigs! Let them test their vaccines there. Sadly, our leaders are dumb enough to allow them. #AfricansAreNotLabRats”
Below are more reactions from Twitter;
