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I came across an outstanding video and audio on social media with a message telling people that a malaria vaccine that was going to be in place in Ghana was not good and should be rejected. It was interesting to know the reaction they caused among the many readers who immediately joined the message, despite the obvious lack of truth. I watched the video and also listened to the audio critically. I do not know if these two people did research on what they said, but they did not seem to have any.
The video guy started with a problem of Kenyan women being sterilized under the pretext of being offered contraception. This is false and a review article (1) brings together all the facts to prove it. People have raised questions about attempts to sterilize some people with the help of vaccines. Such conspiracy theories ensure that avoidable conditions persist in some places where people would not want to take the vaccine because they are convinced that it is an attempt to make them sterile rather than prevent an illness. While it was true that polio vaccines sterilized people, for example, everyone who took the vaccine should have been sterile. However, considering that we have vaccinated almost every child in Ghana against poliomyelitis, we have not seen any decline in fertility rates. There is no evidence of this kind anywhere. When did you last hear about a child disabled by polio in Ghana? When was the last time you heard about a kid with measles in Ghana? There has been no vaccine-preventable disease in Ghana for years; thanks to the vaccination programs put in place. Yet, there are cases of polio in three places in the world now; Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan (2). This is mainly due to conspiracy theories that vaccines are a means of sterilizing people, which makes them reject the vaccine. In addition, in the United States, measles outbreaks have occurred recently, due to the fact that some people are not immunized because they would not take the vaccine for a variety of reasons, the main one being the link between measles vaccine and autism. However, it has long been known that this information was falsified and the publication was even withdrawn (3, 4). There is no evidence that measles vaccines cause autism or that polio vaccines sterilize the population. What we must understand is that the more people who take the vaccines, the better the protection of all.
He also mentioned that Bill Gates' top priority was to depopulate Africa, which is baseless. He said we are a threat and that the growth of our population is a threat to the "abrofofo" (whites). Bill Gates has invested heavily in solving many maternal and child health issues. The offer of birth control (which is not mandatory in pbading) is a way to help control births as we work on the problems we face during childbirth and neonatal and child problems. China is a developed country that does not experience many maternal and child health problems, but that enforces a family planning policy that limits the number of children that a couple can have. The Kenyan problem, for example, and mbad immunization campaigns against polio have all been provided by the World Health Organization (WHO), which is not an organization that merely "aborts". The WHO is interested in international public health and the current Director General is from Ethiopia.
GSK, the company that made this malaria vaccine, is the same company that manufactures Calpol (paracetamol for children), Bactroban, Augmentin, Ventolin (inhaler for asthma), Malarone (an antimalarial), Ceftin (cefuroxime) and many other widely used brands Ghana. They do not need this vaccine to annihilate us if they intended. We would have left long ago if that was the mission. Anyway, which commercial farmer will kill the members of his village who rarely practice agriculture by themselves and depend on their crops to survive? He would use up his own income. Yesterday, when I reviewed Clinicaltrials.gov, the largest drug trial registry, 39% of all global drug trials are underway in the United States. The rest of the world shares the rest. In fact, the first test phases of this malaria vaccine to badess safety were conducted in the United States and Belgium before conducting efficacy trials in areas where the disease is prevalent. How do you test the effectiveness of a drug outside of the natural environment where the illness that it seeks to cure occurs? How do you determine if the vaccine works or not if you vaccinate someone in America against malaria? There is no malaria there. Have you heard of anti-cancer drug trials in Ghana? Why not? There are many more cases of cancer where drugs are made. In a word, no one is targeting us.
Vaccines go through phases of clinical trials before being marketed. As a result, many security issues are solved early in the process before they become effective. Even when marketing is approved, post-market surveillance is conducted to see if actual use problems may have been resolved due to "limited" population size for all trials before their approval. the market. It has been proven that vaccines work and that they have problems, they are removed from the market.
The malaria vaccine being deployed has moved to phase 3 and has shown some effectiveness (39%). Its safety profile was also acceptable (5, 6, 7). Ghana was part of 7 countries in sub-Saharan Africa where these phase 3 trials were conducted. So this is not true when you say that the vaccine has not been tested before and that it is now bringing it to Ghana for testing on people. In addition, asking that "if it was good, why is it not used where it was made" clearly indicates that the speaker does not understand what she is saying. The vaccine is given where the disease is or may be transmitted to prevent this disease. About 90% of malaria cases occur in sub-Saharan Africa, so who needs it most? (8) The vaccine is not only being deployed in Ghana, but also in Kenya and Malawi, in collaboration with WHO.
In the epidemiological triad, there is a host (in this case humans), an agent (pathogenic organism) and the environment with sometimes a vector in the middle (in the case of malaria, it is the mosquito). In an attempt to fight a disease, efforts are made to treat all angles. Gutter cleaning, as the guy said, is in the environmental category. The drugs attack the agent (plasmodium parasite, which has developed resistance to certain drugs over time) and the vaccines create host immunity against the disease. The effectiveness of this malaria vaccine shows that it can prevent about 4 out of 10 cases of malaria. When immunity is created in a child, the body is able to destroy the parasite when a mosquito "throws" In the body of the child so that the child is not sick and that no other parasite can be pbaded from this child to another. child to cause illness. As immunity increases in the population, in addition to other disease control mechanisms, malaria will be gradually eliminated and eventually eradicated.
It is said that malaria kills a child every 30 seconds and that more than a million people die from malaria each year. The cost of controlling and treating malaria also has a considerable impact on economies (8). Malaria is a serious problem in our part of the world and so it is good to fight it on all fronts and spend a lot of money on malaria research to find solutions to the threat.
People may try to say things of good will, but if they are misinformed, they will do more harm than good. Two people tried to tell Ghanaians not to accept the malaria vaccine (which would actually benefit them) even though they did not seem to know what it was about. It is therefore imperative that we, as people, try to determine what people are throwing on social media to make sure they are truthful before drawing conclusions or taking action. We must be like Bereans who "received the word with all promptness of mind, and searched the scriptures every day, if these things were so"(Acts 17:11).
Our leaders also need to educate and educate people when such events are about to occur, so that they are not misguided in their decisions when unusual people broadcast non-factual information. It will also help build trust.
By Oswald Tetteh and Judge Boakye-Appiah
Oswald Tetteh, MD, MPH is a graduate of the University of Ghana School of Medicine and Dentistry and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is currently Clinical Research Compliance Specialist for the ClinicalTrials.gov program of the Johns Hopkins University Clinical and Translational Research Institute.
Justice Boakye-Appiah is a Medical doctor and PhD student in immuno-vaccinology at the Institute of Infection and Immunity at St George's Hospital, University of London.
References:
1 https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tetanus-vaccine-sterilization/ (accessed May 2, 2019)
2 https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelitis (accessed May 2, 2019).
3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136032/ (accessed May 2, 2019)
4 https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/do-vaccines-cause-autism (Accessed May 2, 2019)
5 https://www.afro.who.int/news/ghana-announces-roll-out-malaria-vaccine-implementation-program-mvip (accessed May 2, 2019).
6 https://www.who.int/malaria/media/rtss-phase-3-trial-qa/en/ (accessed 2 May 2019).
7 https://www.malariavaccine.org/malaria-and-vaccines/rtss (accessed 2 May 2019).
8 https://www.unicef.org/health/files/health_africamalaria.pdf (accessed 2 May 2019)
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