OF THE EURO 2020 AND COVIDEX

Ever since the World Cup in 1982 I have waited with bated breath for the soccer’s biggest bonanza’s brought to us live on TV.

First it was only the World Cup and Africa Cup of Nations then the Euros, the Olympics and now the Copa America.

With age of course my enthusiasm has waned. But this last week I found myself back in that mode with the European football championships, UEFA Euro 2020, because of the new lock down.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic this year’s Euro 2020 are not only unique for coming a year later than scheduled, but also because it is being played across 11 countries, unlike in the past when one country hosted the whole tournament.

The stadium crowds are back, depending on which country the match is being played in stadiums are nearly full or up to one third full. And horror of horrors in some of the stadiums there are people not wearing masks.

I kind of worked out that in those countries its possible most if not all their nationals are vaccinated.

"According to online statistics by earlier this week in the European Union at least 74 percent of its population has received one of two jabs of the Covid-19 vaccine. The UK alone has vaccinated all its population and then some, at 109 percent for the same measure....

The  equivalent figure for Africa was 3.47 percent and for Uganda an even more dismal 1.82 percent.

Which brings me nicely around to the controversy surrounding  Professor Patrick Ogwang’s Covidex “cure” for Covid-19.

Two weekends ago the word went around that the aforementioned drug was available in specific pharmacies around the Kampala. Serpentine lines, often reserved for certain churches, were suddenly seen outside some of the pharmacies, with stocks running out as soon as they hit the shelves.

The National Drug Authority (NDA), which is charged with regulating drugs in the country, came out days later to disown the drug arguing that it had not gone through the necessary authorizations to be made public, effectively banning it.

In the context of the desperation that had come with the spike in Covid-19 infections, the NDA can be forgiven for being behind the curve. It did not help their case in the public’s eye that Professor Ogwang is a respected researcher in herbal medicine, having developed several herbal remedies in the past that had been cleared by the NDA.

That brings us to a new term that has entered our language along with “social distancing” and “flattening the curve”, which is “vaccine nationalism”. Richer countries, which incidentally were worst hit by the pandemic last year, booked millions of doses of vaccines from several that were still in development. Their prescience paid off this year, hence allowing them to manage the massive roll out as described above within months of the vaccines going into production.

The challenge is that many of these countries – England for instance have the first right to purchase enough vaccine to cover their own populations many times over. This has the unhappy effect of leaving the poorer countries without chance of vaccinating their populations adequately soon –  the earliest by 2024 by certain accounts...

We have seen in Uganda that our initial one million doses are done and next week we start with the 175,000 doses that came in last week, with preference for those who already had their first shot.

In light of this, the case of professor Ogwang can not be treated as business as usual. While we may argue about why Professor Ogwang did not go through the stipulated procedure as he knows he should, there is a strong case for fast tracking his and any other drug under test. That does not mean allowing it through, but making sure it meets the minimum criteria to be rolled out to the population, especially since the claim is it has preventative qualities as well.

We will not be the only ones doing it. Western government fast tracked the production of vaccines against Covid-19 last year, while countries like China and Russia have developed their own vaccines, which while all not cleared by the World Health Organisation (WHO) seemed to have brought the pandemic under control there.

The reason the Covid-19 vaccines were rushed out is because the west was hit particularly badly by the pandemic. We have lived with malaria, TB and diarrheal diseases for ages because they do not command the same attention in the west.

This should be a lesson for us. We have to develop our own capacity to research and develop, not only drugs but other appropriate technologies for ourselves, because no one else will do it for us.

Mask up. Social distance. Wash your hands. And go get vaccinated.