NO ‘HERB 25’? NO ‘WORLD MALARIA DAY’!

At the end of the day, despite the one-day flurry of public-eye activities by high and low public officers in gullible nations such as ours, nothing comes out of it except the promise to again celebrate the day next year.But the Column makes an exception this week – World Malaria Day is being celebrated. And […]

At the end of the day, despite the one-day flurry of public-eye activities by high and low public officers in gullible nations such as ours, nothing comes out of it except the promise to again celebrate the day next year.
But the Column makes an exception this week – World Malaria Day is being celebrated. And because we want to make some points which have been made here time and again in the past (and which we shouldn’t shy away or tire from remaking), we say to ourselves Happy Malaria Day, and may the Good Lord help us do away with this disease and its harbinger, the Greatest Murderer of Africans, Lanky Boy Slim Mosquito.
Most diseases, such as Malaria which is being ‘celebrated’ this week, have two sides to their amelioration – the preventive and the curative. The most important, of course, is the preventive, for if there is no affliction there will be no need of prophylaxis, to borrow from ‘big grammar’ of UN proportions. Malaria is preventable, and not only by that famously-named multilateral equipment called the Insecticide Treated Nets (ITNs).
Just a century ago, Europe and other ‘advanced’ countries suffered from the same diseases today afflicting underdeveloped nations – malaria, typhus (or typhoid fever), cholera. But almost in one fell swoop, Europe literally vanished these diseases underground. They did not use ITNs to ward off mosquito, they did not overdose on Amatem, they didn’t spray Rambo. No, the simple solution was that they sent all their open gutters down beneath their cities. The sewerage system denied the mosquito a breeding place and denied the fly the filth to visit and pick bacteria and distribute. Most diseases literally went down the drain.
This Column has not heard any global agency such as the UN, the World Health Organisation (WHO) or the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) advising Nigerians (or, say, my State, Kano) to attack malaria by vanishing open gutters into underground sewages, or by simple vector control (ensuring mosquitoes do not breed) using chemicals others have used. We haven’t heard advice from them that laws against filth must be enforced strictly. Most Western countries do of course have such a condescending attitude and patronising view of us Africans; they believe we just can’t get it right in things such as sewage.
And they are almost right. Alas! Poor countries are cursed with wicked, ineffective and I-don’t-care leaders who believe what they are told and only parrot ITNs, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Lonart, Fansidar, and Amatem! And then the money continues to flow away from us to them; though every propaganda says it is them that give us aid. In Nigerianese, na lie. Let them help us make sewages and drainages if they really want us to fight malaria. Meanwhile, mosquitoes continue to breed in our open gutters.
It is true that, in the case of malaria, too many Africans are already infected and afflicted to benefit from any future preventive measures, but the millions of children in the womb and those newly in the world face the same bleak future we all faced unless if we do the right thing – vector control by hiding our gutters and effectively evacuating our filth and rubbish and garbage. And then making sure people sustain these measures by laws strictly enforced.
Yes, it is a project of gargantuan proportions to hide away our drainages underground, especially for old cities such as mine, Kano (where I was born, in Darma in the old city, even a bicycle can’t negotiate our alley, lungu). So before that is achieved (if ever, although it is of course possible – Allah has created the Chinese) there is another method of vector control, the use of DDT (Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane), one of the most well-known synthetic pesticides.
One Nigerian who understands that the best way to tackle malaria through DDT is Dr. Mathias Offoboche, one-time Deputy Governor of old Cross River State. The doctor, in a write-up in 2005 advocating for the use of DDT, states: “No war against malaria can be successful without malaria vector control. Indoor residual spraying of DDT has been established to be the safe, tested, cheap, sustainable weapon against mosquitoes.
“The Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria (GFATM), a major Donor Agency, experimented with DDT indoor residual spraying in the copper mines of Zambia. The experiments were so successful that GFATM now uses DDT in the whole of Zambia. Malaria death rates in Swaziland which uses DDT is now 2-4%; South Africa was pressurized to stop using DDT in 1996 but because the incidence of malaria sky-rocketed, it ignored the corrupting financial aids of Donor Agencies and recommenced the use of DDT in 2000.”
Writing on malariaeradicati-oninafrica.org, Dr.Offoboche further argues that “The business of bed nets is booming at the expense of malaria control, their purchase is more profitable than their usage. Opposition to the use of DDT is also responsible for the diversion of huge donor funds to the purchase of mosquito bed nets the use of which is unpopular, unenforceable and less effective in the long run.”
Lack of electricity has multiplied several folds the problem of malaria in this country. Most people had depended on electric fans – ceiling fans, table fans, standing fans, wall fans, all sorts of fans – to ward off mosquitoes. Without electricity, this darkest, most evil and most dangerous of insects always has a field day, nay night. May your fan work!
And then after all these, if you are infected by malaria, there is a great remedy on the cheap. Three years ago, Allah opened my eyes and solved my long-time malaria ailment through the intervention of Herb 25, a simple anti-malarial I now use. On this page twice in the past I have told readers how I waited three full months before I could make the eureka announcement that indeed Herb 25 works. Yes, Hear O World! For the past three years out of the nearly half century of my mortal existence, my malaria has NOT recurred. (The fact of my life was that I used to come down with malaria almost every month or less, Western drugs notwithstanding).
There is no way Herbal Point, the makers of Herb 25, can undertake publicity and advertisement on the scale of other global anti-malarials, whose profits are in the billions of dollars. So consider this our continuous contribution to making public this wholly-Nigerian product, and which works! It is hoped, says Herbal Point, that all stakeholders including the Government could come together to make the product reach particularly those most at risk and pave the way for an effective, affordable, accessible and sustainable chemotherapeutic agent against malaria for Nigeria and Africa.
So before we reach the stage of Western-style sewage system and before we reach South African-style DDT-spraying, we have Herb 25 at hand – and Ota Pia-Pia. We must use anything to ward off this slim devil, the harbinger of malaria. Someone has said, “If you think you’re too small to be effective, you’ve never been in bed with a mosquito.”
May Allah perish this slim being (and I have nothing against Slims, and this has nothing to do with the fact that I am weight-challenged!)