Prof Gordon Awandare (2nd left) being congratulated by some of his colleagues

 The Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana in-charge of Students and Academic Affairs, Prof Gordon Awandare, has said that the relatively low COVID-19 mortality recorded in Africa, has nothing to do with the hot climate in Africa, as some people suggested.

Making reference to a research conducted by his team, he observed that the rate of COVID-19 infections among Ghanaians was less, due to fre­quent exposure to malaria fight from childhood.

Professor Awandare was speaking during his inaugural lecture at the University of Ghana, last Thursday, on the topic: “How our Immune System Acquired Tolerance to Malaria and Helped us Survive COVID-19.”

According to him, the immune sys­tem of Ghanaians became tolerant to malaria parasites thereby “pro­tecting them from the severity of the pandemic.”

He again stated that pa­tients, who were infected with malaria parasites but showed no symptoms, had the capability of tolerating malaria parasites.

“Such people are asympto­matic patients and most of them live in malaria endemic areas thus their tolerance for the parasites intrigued my team and I,” he added.

He further noted that children and persons who hadn’t been exposed to malaria before were likely to have severe symptoms of malaria such as headache and little bit of fatigue.

This was also backed by a study he had undertaken in three key areas namely Kintampo, Navrongo and Accra on the differences in transmission rates within the country.

His study observed that despite having “lower parasite levels,” chil­dren in Accra were prone to higher fever than those at Kintampo who had huge parasite level.

Professor Awandare, who is also the Founding Director of the West Afri­ca Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP), said that COV­ID-19 showed that African scientists were competent as their counterparts abroad, saying “this is because here at WACCBIP, we were able to sequence and test the virus as others did, thus understanding the virus.”

Professor Awandare stressed the need for the country to position itself towards developing vaccines locally instead of relying on foreign donors, and tasked Ghanaians to continue to support institutions like WACCBIP in order to train more scientists and build capacity.

Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Nana Aba Appiah Amfo, also underscored that diverse significant roles played by several units of the uni­versity during the pandemic, contrib­uted to understanding the pathogens, biology and disease mechanism to gen­erate knowledge for the development of diagnostics, vaccines and drugs.

The inaugral lecture formed part of an exhibition of scholarly works by the renowned professor at the Balme Library, which had begun on Monday.

 By Yunusah Essandoh