Africa’s strong men fail health test
A number of the continent’s leaders are reluctant to seek medical treatment in their own countries – and you’ve got to wonder why
By now you ought to be familiar with the basic premise of vaccine nationalism. Wealthy countries and blocs like Canada, the US and the EU are stockpiling Covid19 vaccines and refusing to support a motion at the World Trade Organisation, brought by South Africa and India, to waive intellectual property rights that will allow poorer nations to manufacture generic versions of the vaccines.
The World Health Organisation’s own initiative to distribute vaccines to developing nations, the Covax Alliance, is not safe from the intrusion of wealthy countries: either they have been slow to support it; or, in Canada’s case, have actively undermined it by signing up for 1.9-million doses, despite having already purchased enough vaccines for each of its citizens to be vaccinated six times over, as Aanu Adeoye wrote recently for our sister publication The Continent.
But what’s missing from this discussion is the culpability of African leaders in leaving us once again dependent on the largesse of Western nations.
In an unsurprisingly routine turn of events, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari went to London for a routine medical check-up.
Presidential spokesperson Femi Adesina told Bloomberg that the 78-year-old had set off on the junket
that is expected to last till next week.
If your hypocrite alarm is going off, there’s a good reason. In 2015, Buhari campaigned on ending medical tourism — the practice of Nigerian politicians travelling abroad for medical care. But he himself became known for spending long periods in Britain being treated for undisclosed ailments. Since becoming president, he has visited the UK on at least five medical trips, including a lengthy stay of more than five months in 2017.
The president’s aides insisted their boss was just fine, even as images of a markedly slimmer Buhari receiving visitors emerged. In the absence of concrete evidence, speculation grew, and an outlandish story about a body double (“Jubril from Sudan”) replacing Buhari came to be widely believed in many circles around the country. The rumour gained so much traction that Buhari himself had to dispel it.
Buhari’s case was not Nigeria’s first nor worst rodeo with a president’s failing health being shrouded in secrecy. Before him, Umaru Yar’adua, who served as president of the country from 2007 until 2010, died in office after a long illness, which was mostly
concealed from the public.
His condition precipitated a constitutional crisis because he had neglected to make proper succession arrangements before he became too weak to do so.
And it isn’t just Nigeria that has presidents whose only encounter with their country’s healthcare systems is through photo ops and news reports. Zimbabwe’s late president Robert Mugabe was notorious for his Singaporean jaunts, often commandeering the national carrier to jet off at a moment’s notice.
Algeria’s president Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who contracted Covid19 earlier this year, sloped off to receive treatment in Europe. Gabon’s President Ali Bongo has spent months shuttling between hospitals in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, and looks more fragile every time he makes a public appearance. Former Angolan president José Eduardo Dos Santos was absent for nearly a month before the government confirmed he was receiving medical treatment in Spain.
And, of course, there’s the late Michael Sata, the Zambian president who suggested reports of his ailing health were treasonous, before expiring in a London hospital in 2014.
Today we have to contend with our leaders’ loud condemnation of vaccine nationalism, but that’s not the whole story.
Rather ambitiously 20 years ago, members of the African Union agreed to spend 15% of their national budgets on health. By 2018, only two countries had met this lofty goal. Nigeria’s biggest increase in five years in 2020 saw it rise only to 4%. In a country in which doctors are routinely underpaid and work in deplorable conditions, that’s not nearly enough. Amid a crushing pandemic, South Africa’s killer austerity budget meant it went the other way. Yes, our country cut its own health budget recently.
In addition to this, the country’s vaccine roll-out plan has teetered along, with the government now planning to vaccinate 22-million citizens between November 2020 and February 2022. Throw out that previously promised target of 67% of the population by the end of year. Incomprehensibly, not one single vaccine was administered over the 19 March long weekend — for three days.
These are Africa’s two biggest economies. In smaller countries, the situation is even more bleak. Despite Equatorial Guinea’s immense oil wealth, more than half of its population of 1.4-million people does not have reliable access to clean water.
If African leaders actually had to use their own under-funded health systems, perhaps we wouldn’t again be showing up hat in hand. We can righteously berate Western nations for hoarding vaccines for themselves, but we must never forget to direct some of that ire to our own leaders.