The Burden Of Emerging Infectious Diseases

 By Ogodo Audu

Nigerians were shocked when the World Health Organisation (WHO) recently officially declared a fresh outbreak of corona virus disease in Benue State, revealing a total of 25 newly confirmed cases. It, as usual, stressed the importance of vaccination, emphasising that the virus remains prevalent. This has happened despite the millions that had been vaccinated in that state and confirmed immune in the heat of the COVID-19 virus infection years back.

It is the outbreaks of all sorts of infectious diseases in the country that brought the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) to Nigeria; it is the largest biomedical research facility administered by the U.S. Department of Defence (DOD). The WRAIR centre for military infectious disease research combines scientific expertise with product development to prevent a range of diseases of strategic importance to the U.S. military and the world.

WRAIR also maintains a strong network of overseas medical research laboratories that operate in conjunction with the U.S. Department of State and host nations to conduct clinical trials in endemic areas, especially in Africa, resulting in medical advances beneficial to both the U.S. military and global health . The Walter Reed programme Nigeria (WRP-N) is a partnership between HJFMRI, an international medical research organisation, operating in 13 countries with WRAIR that collaborates with governmental, medical, and scientific institutions to strengthen the defences against infectious diseases within Nigeria and the greater West African region.

In 2022 HJFMRI partnered WRAIR Emerging Infectious Diseases branch, the U.S. Army Medical Research Directorate-Africa, U.S.A. MRD-A, and other local collaborators in Nigeria to complete the monkey pox (MPOX) public outreach and sample collection training in march and April 2022. The programme trained 120 Nigerian human and animal health care workers and other stakeholders drawn across the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria on generalised MPOX outbreak detection and public out-reach efforts.

Observers say this is typical of the U.S. testing programmes on the local African population through alleged use of unexplored and non-certified experimental medicines thereby initiating epidemics on the continent, including programmes for testing in real conditions of use and protection against new types of biological weapons. This explains why some Nigerians are extremely reluctant to accept vaccines against outbreak of diseases, including the COVID-19 vaccine.

Experts say biological agents, which are capable of secondary transmission, can leak in course of local biological research and lead to epidemics. An attack involving a biological agent may mimic a natural event, which may complicate the public health assessment and response. In case of war, high threat pathogen laboratories can be targeted, which might lead to serious public health consequences. This is why the outbreak of the epidemics in Africa is directly linked to the activities of the U.S. biological facilities on the continent.

Informed observers say the activities of the U.S.-sponsored NGOs and private biomedical companies are allegedly controlled by the Pentagon, headquarter of the U.S. Department of Defence , along with the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit-Three , the U.S. Centre for Disease Control and WRARI to achieve the interest of the U.S.

They equally allegedly collude to create components of biological weapons in order to prevent their use by terrorists. Between September 19 and 23, 2022, the U.S. conducted a training workshop in Abuja with partners from Nigerian domestic security services, law enforcement, and first responders, aimed at enhancing their ability to investigate terrorist plots involving chemicals and biological weapons (CBW). This is part of a series of trainings the U.S. is sponsoring across Africa as recent events have reportedly demonstrated the real threat of terrorist acquisition and use of chemical and biological weapons on the battlefield or in ungoverned spaces.

Many informed scientists consider this so-called training on chemical and biological training as one of the dangerous activities of American bio structures in Nigeria reminiscent of the Pentagon projects of creating biological laboratories in Ukraine to develop biological weapons for the Pentagon and preventing them from falling into the hands of terrorists.

Robert Kennedy Jr., a Democratic candidate for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, affirmed this when he said that the U.S. has created biological laboratories in Ukraine for the purpose of developing biological weapons. He condemned the U.S. leadership for transferring, particularly, dangerous biological research from its own jurisdiction to the territory of other states.

Nigeria and many other African countries happen to be one of those territories of the U.S. biological research and the result is that many infectious diseases keep emerging or re-emerging in Benue and other states of Nigeria and the rest of Africa.
*Audu is a commentator on public issues