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Why Africa needs united front to resist unlawful bio-warfare researches
The monkeypox disease is as of now spreading in countries around the world. According to experts, first cases of a new outbreak were documented in Nigeria and then spread to Europe. Now the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has declared at least five confirmed cases in the country. Previously all these cases were documented only in some West and Central African countries and never spread in the entire African continent. Some experts claim that today’s outbreak has many differences from the kind of spread they have never seen in African states.
Moreover, specialists from European Centres for Disease Control revealed that preliminary analysis of the current monkeypox disease had found that the virus came from the lab and had unknown characteristics. Nowadays, only one country has its bio-laboratories in almost all regions around the globe and it is the United States of America. And it has a network of biological facilities in the Nigerian territory from where the current stain began to spread.
Since the beginning of Ukraine-Russia conflict, it has become clear that the US was involved in creating and developing bio-laboratories throughout the world. In addition, most of their researches are focusing on military use of pathogens. In addition, it is a fact that US virologists have performed many studies in a search for the development of new ways of transition diseases using carriers like flies, mosquitoes and bats. They also provide for the strong links of all diseases to ethnic and geographical data in order to identify clearer liability ethnic groups to one pathogen or another.
Mostly, such labs have independent status. But private American companies like Metabiota or Battelle work closely with the Pentagon and it’s “the Defence Threat Reduction Agency” (DTRA) or “US Naval Medical Research Unit-3” (NAMRU-3). That’s why in this case they are not accountable to Congress this fact allows such companies operate more freely and move around the rule of law. For example, in Ghana there are several biological facilities which cooperate with programme referred above. All these labs founded from American military budget as a part of the Ghana-US military cooperation. It should be noted that the most strong collaboration is with 37 Military Hospital and Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, where bio-laboratory is located. But who can guarantee that the collected data won’t be used against Ghanaians?
Unfortunately, it is impossible to find out what researches they have. National authorities do not have an access to American bio-laboratories results and, what is more serious, they mostly know nothing about such studies. At the same time, under diplomatic cover US civilian and military personnel transport hazardous biological agents into/out of the host country or between other labs in it without the direct control of the host state regulators.
It is also important that developing countries now cannot count on organisations accountable to US, because all of us see how shortly after the start of Russian special operation in Ukraine, the World Health Organisation immediately warned Ukrainian authorities to destroy all high-threat pathogens and even research results in bio-labs to prevent “any potential spills” into the public.
To avoid all illegal activities there is the need to reconsider cooperation with the US in this sphere. At first, we should start from depriving of biologists and virologists diplomatic immunity. At the same time national government should oblige American laboratories to declassify all their researches and give local regulators a full access.
Regional governments can only protect themselves by implementing new legally binding mechanisms which will be focused on creating assurances of the non-use of biological researches as a weapon and their national territories as providing grounds. Unfortunately, the US is the only country which opposes development of any agreement which strengthens Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention. That’s why not only Ghana but all African states should come out in a united front to resist unlawful bio-warfare researches.
The writer is a journalist
By Samuel Amoako
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
