Two staff members of the Congolese Ministry of Health pack their equipment after performing a COVID-19 test at a private residence in Goma, northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, on March 31, 2020 (AFP Photo/ALEXIS HUGUET)
Two French medical professionals have been slammed by social media users for discussing testing Covid-19 vaccines in Africa live on television.
French TV channel LCI broadcast a discussion between doctors Jean-Paul Mira and Camille Locht, Business Insider reported.
In the segment, which has since gone viral, the two doctors engage in a back-and-forth discussion about whether to do the study in Africa, “where there are no masks, no treatment, no reanimation,” according to Mira.
Locht responds by agreeing with Mira, saying that talks of a “parallel study” taking place with “BCG Placebos”, and that a request for a proposal to be put together has been received, but may not have formally been released yet.
The video prompted the Twitter trend #AfricansAreNotLabRats on Saturday, in which Twitter users question why two doctors in Europe not look at testing vaccines on their own populations, which have experienced a far higher death toll during the Covid-19 pandemic than Africa.
Others called the doctors’ proposal racist, denouncing their “provocative” discussion.
The trend also grabbed the attention of former Ivorian Chelsea striker Didier Drogba, who said he “vividly denounce[d] those demeaning, false and most of all deeply racists words.”
On Friday, head of the Democratic Republic of Congo national biological institute Jean-Jacques Muyembe is prepared to take part in testing of any future vaccine against the coronavirus, AFP reported.
“The vaccine will be produced in the United States, or in Canada, or in China. We’re candidates for doing the testing here,” Muyembe told a news briefing in comments that sparked controversy in DR Congo amid charges the population was being used as guinea pigs.
(Compiled by Nica Richards)
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