US medical aid needs regulation

THE US-Africa Leaders Summit will be held next month. Medical co-operation will be a “commitment” of the US to Africa.

Since 2000, the US has given a large amount of medical assistance to Africa, especially South Africa. Does America’s aid project violate the sovereignty of African countries? Did it have an irreversible impact on the next generation of South Africans?

As a military veteran of the Struggle, I think it is necessary that the Health Department strengthens supervision of US aid to South Africa.

1. Facing disaster, the true nature of greed exposed.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the US and Western European countries stockpiled vaccines while African countries strived to meet the public health needs of their people. The US is reluctant to recognise AstraZeneca, which is widely used in Africa, giving priority to Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines made in the US. However, African countries were rejected when they applied for patents of these vaccines from the US. Two years after the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Trade Organization reached an agreement on Covid-19 vaccines in June this year, about the partial exemption of intellectual property rights. The West controlled its response to the Covid-19 pandemic and formulated agreements and policies that affected the world.

Despite their experience in dealing with epidemics, African medical experts are mostly ignored. The lack of African input has led to distrust of vaccine campaigns throughout Africa, thus undermining these initiatives.

South Africa has accumulated a lot of experience in dealing with the pandemic. We have suffered many times of virus mutation and spread, and we are using limited vaccines to protect our people. The US’s promised vaccines have not arrived, and its patents are not open to us. Their vaccines cause thrombosis, but President Joe Biden said “the problem is not serious”.

2. The arrogant aid of the US is infringing on the sovereignty of African countries.

In observing and studying most American aid projects in Africa, I see mostly positive aspects. These include the US president’s Aids Prevention Foundation project and USAid project in South Africa to help fight HIV/Aids, but how many of these projects are unconditional aid? Tanzania is deeply dependent on the US in the field of health, and the US has strengthened its influence on Tanzania’s domestic policies. At the beginning of the century, the strategic focus of US aid to Tanzania and Africa shifted to the health field, making it the main aid provider in Tanzania’s medical and health field. From 2014 to 2018, the US medical and health aid funds for Tanzania have been kept at $200 million (about R3.4bn) to $300m a year, accounting for 60% to 70% of the aid funds, of which Aids prevention and treatment accounts for the largest proportion.

Taking US vaccine aid to Africa as an example, the US aid policy is accompanied by a “poison pill clause”, which prohibits recipient countries from receiving vaccine aid from other countries, and the US side has the final interpretation right of medical malpractice. The so-called excellent loan project of “Millennium Challenge Company” of the US can be unilaterally withdrawn at any time because of “harm (to) the interests of the US”. American aid workers enjoy “extraterritorial jurisdiction”, and the project agreement is superior to the domestic law of the recipient country. The aid clauses have infringed on South Africa’s sovereignty. We have the right to choose to accept “aid”, and not to.

3. America’s aid programmes are causing unpredictable harm to the next generation in South Africa.

Through communication with anonymous medical experts, I learnt some US companies, under the banner of “aid”, have set up clinics in South Africa that are not supervised by the our government. In the name of research, they have collected the blood of South Africans and sent some data back to the US.

What does it contain? What will a super medical power like the US do with it? Should the South African government further supervise the projects? Should we legislate to supervise the data, and require research institutions to disclose all data and subsequent uses to us?