COVID-19: Africa’s relation with epidemics and some imperative ethics considerations of the moment

Abstract

COVID-19 is a very complex pandemic. It has affected individuals, different countries and regions of the world equally in some senses and differently in other senses. While sub-Saharan Africa has weathered a range of outbreaks of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, the manner in which the COVID-19 pandemic has evolved necessitates some observations, remarks and conclusions from our own situated observation point. Compared to previous epidemics/pandemics, many African countries have displayed a sense of solidarity in the face of COVID-19 that convincingly demonstrates that an Ubuntu ethic is viable and globalizable. The African continent seems, at last, to have realized that ethics dumping must be avoided and has made strides in defining its COVID-19 research agenda and strengthening its epidemic response for both public health and health research. More needs to be done in terms of public engagement, funding and technical support for research on potential therapies/candidate vaccines that are a product of scientific studies on the continent.

Barriers to COVID-19 Health Products in Low-and Middle-Income Countries During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Rapid Systematic Review and Evidence Synthesis

“…HICs, international funding agencies and multi-national pharmaceutical companies by their actions since the start of the pandemic, were not so willing to support scientific research and/or clinical testing of biomedical or indigenous herbal therapies (for curing or preventing COVID-19) in Africa, signaling a sideling of African research priorities for R&D compared to global priorities that often favor western pharmaceutical therapies and markets (53). For instance, the Africa CDC alongside the WHO cautioned against use of the Madagascar herbal tonic (COVID-Organics) and other herbal remedies from Africa considered to be unproven/untested via clinical trials after they were already been widely used and considered effective in some African countries (98).…”

“…They however did constitute a panel of experts to evaluate the efficacy of said therapies and jointly produced a research protocol and terms of reference for conducting COVID-19 herbal medicine clinical trials (98). It's important to also note that only a very limited number of herbal clinical studies have led to licensed products in Africa (53). More on this below.…”

“…At the wake of the pandemic, Malagasy and Cameroonian herbal therapies for COVID-19 had been alleged to be effective but implementing clinical trials of these therapies was challenging, from an ethical and regulatory standpoint, but also from a technical capacity and funding stand point thus casting doubts at international, African regional, country and local levels as to its quality and safety (53). The skepticism about these therapies have been reported by some authors as anti-African bias which could influence other forms of skepticism about western COVID-19 health products (80).…”

Handling Ethics Dumping and Neo-Colonial Research: From the Laboratory to the Academic Literature

“…In times of weakness, volatility, fragility, and disasters (O’Mathúna 2020 ), such as disease epidemics like the Ebola virus or the current COVID-19 pandemic, “vulnerable” populations such as sick, weak, or financially distraught individuals in LICs may be prone to exploitation by researchers in HICs (Kelley et al 2020 ; Singh et al 2021 ). Trusts, corporations, and philanthropic organizations that offer charitable donations while seeking medical solutions in LICs may exclusively bring wealth to companies in HICs (Nembaware et al 2020 ; Tangwa and Munung 2020 ), so greater transparency of their operations in LICs is needed. Access to online data should occur within a strict ethical and legal framework that protects the rights and privacy of patients, including prior informed consent (PIC) (Andanda 2020 ; Kumar and Muthuswamy 2020 ) to reduce ethical research- and publishing-related abuses and negative reputational consequences, including retractions, for example as a result of editorial oversight and lack of rigour in screening raw COVID-19-related data (Teixeira da Silva, Bornemann-Cimenti, and Tsigaris 2021 ).…”

Ethical research in the COVID-19 era demands care, solidarity and trustworthiness

“…For global success in the fight against COVID-19, all nations and peoples must be included. In this respect, much can be learnt from African countries that have displayed a considerable sense of solidarity in the face of COVID-19 (Tangwa and Munung, 2020). Central to this view of solidarity is acceptance that all people are inextricably linked and ‘if we are to survive in such an interconnected and interdependent world where we face common challenges, we must begin to perceive the world as a global community with a shared destiny’ (Tosam et al, 2018: 242).…”