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COVID-19: NMA Calls for collaboration between Nigeria and China On Vaccine development

Published

5 years ago

June 27, 2020

John Okeke

The President of the Nigeria Medical Association Professor Innocent Ujah has called for greater collaboration between Nigerian doctors and their Chinese counterparts in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professor Ujah who spoke in Abuja, noted that Chinese doctors have shown capacity in containing the virus after the outbreak was first reported Wuhan, China. He however noted that Nigeria has not have a huge success in containing the virus.

“unlike China who within 72 hours of the outbreak of the virus, constructed a huge isolation/treatment centre for containment of the virus. In Nigeria, I would say we neglected the magnitude of the problem covid-19 could pose to us and were therefore slow in our response. The effect is a current trend of increasing cases of community spread”

He said that although, isolation centres now exist in all states of the federation for containment of the virus more need to be done to foster the joint collaboration between China and Nigeria.

He recalled that on the 17th of June, a video conference was held on a Special Summit on China-Africa solidarity Against Covid-19 in which China pledged to provide more medical supplies to Africa noting that the NMA and China Medical Association need to work together, share ideas and scientific experiences in order to contain covid-19 and other health challenges.

“Through this healthy bilateral relationship, our medical personnel can travel down to China to learn from China’s handling of covid-19 and other infectious diseases. In turn, China Medical Personnel can as well come to Nigeria to learn from our handling of infectious diseases. We all know the professionalism and success Nigeria showed in the handling of Ebola and it shows that our medical personnel are equal to any medical challenge and willing to learn as well” He said.

Speaking on his plans for the NMA, he said the health status of Nigerians was his priority through provision of facility and capacity development.

” As head of this association, we would also push for improved budget allocated to Health care as the health care system has received one of the lowest allocations in recent times and the outbreak of covid-19 exposed the status of our health care system. The NMA in my tenure as president would also push for the creation of a Bank of Health to support Health care just as the Banks of Industry and Agriculture supports Trade and Agriculture respectively. He said.

Reeling out recent achievements of the association he said more women are being incorporated into leadership positions in the association and the laying of a foundation for the NMA house which should be completed in 2 years.

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ELECTING A POPE: THE BURDEN OF MAKING CHOICES

Published

13 hours ago

May 11, 2025

The Gleamer

By Olubunmi Mayaki

“Habemus papam!” which in the English Language means, “We have a Pope.” was pronounced by Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, a French Catholic prelate, His Eminence, Cardinal Dominique Mamberti from the iconic loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican City on Thursday 8 May 2025 after white smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. Those Latin words proclaimed to a tensed global audience the result of the election of a new Supreme Pontiff after the death of Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis) on 21 April 2025 at the age of 88 years.

The Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, Cardinal Robert Prevost (Pope Leo XIV) emerged as primus inter pares (first among equals) from the cardinals after undergoing detailed election rituals, which have been the process of selecting the head of the 2000-year-old Catholic Church for centuries.

A papal conclave, the process by which a new Pope is selected, was held consisting of one hundred and thirty-three (133) College of Cardinals, drawn from different parts of the world converged at St. Peter’s Basilica for a public mass before heading to the Sistine Chapel to cast their votes to elect the 267th Pope. During the mass, part of the choir renditions reminded voters to remember their last day when they would stand before God in judgment to render their stewardship on earth, which is to prevent them from rigging the voting process. At the behest of the senior cardinal deacon, voting formalities were read to the electors, which included- oath-taking- “I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one whom I believe should be elected according to God”. Other processes are banning phones, jamming calls, forbidding speaking or contacting any of the candidates, voting rounds, spiritual pauses etc.

Looking at the voting process, one should be curious about how an election to pick a leader for a religious body could be so systematic and attract such global attention. It is a sharp contrast to elections where political leaders are chosen. Even in the so-called advanced democracies, we have seen electoral flaws and a dearth of political leaders. States are finding it difficult to pick genuine statesmen, giving rise to hegemonic leaders. These political imperia ums are emerging and stoking crises in their domain. Fallouts of elections are no longer favourable due to unpopular candidates forced on citizens.

Africa, as a case study, shows that no matter the rules put in place by the continent’s leaders, our election processes have been fraught with rigging, corruption and waste. In most cases, the leaders who set the rules are the violators of the same process. Governments conspire with electoral bodies to truncate election processes at will. Such political brigandage has destroyed the progress of the continent.

Closing this view, I hope that African leaders will take a cue from the Catholic Church’s election process to reinvigorate and rejig the continent’s faltering political process for the good of its people. Better still; political scholars from the continent can study the Catholic model. The common features of elections in most parts of Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, are riddled with vote rigging, violence, human rights abuse, repression, barbarism, crises, untold hardship, and sometimes, outright war. This is the bane of Africa’s development.

The burden of making good political choices should ordinarily rest on citizens. However, politicians have hijacked this process for selfish reasons. It has given birth to bad leaders. If we fail to get it right, what we see is what we get. That is the story of the world politics!

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