Where’s the promised 1% for science?...Not to talk about the 2.5%, long term!
For two reasons, I envy winners of beauty pageants and TV reality shows.
They get all the media any human being would ever need in their life. Also, their promised prize packages.
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Like most good news, scientific inventions and discoveries don’t make the headlines in Ghana.
That is why I am not surprised that a medical breakthrough at the Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR), Legon, did not attract and has not attracted much media.
Apart from ‘JoyNews’, no media house has announced that this Ghanaian scientific institution has tested some potions that have proved a potential cure for some types of cancer.
More exciting, as a news item, is the fact that Noguchi is not alone on this.
The research work is a collaboration with some herbal practitioners in Ghana and has been ongoing since 2009. The JoyNews report was broadcast on November 23, 2019
Typical of scientists, the language of Professor Regina Appiah-Opong, Head of Clinical Pathology Department at the University of Ghana and Toxicologist at the NMIMR, was terse and unadorned. She told JoyNews simply:
"We have worked on a couple of plants that have shown interesting activities”.
On this particular project, she revealed that "some trials conducted on the compounds derived from plants have proved effective.
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We have worked on it, tested it, in vitro and tested it even on human Ghanaian breast cancer tissues.
It is effective.”
Now, here’s where I am concerned. Despite the progress made, officials fear that funding constraints could delay the project.
Unless we have people and institutions which are interested in supporting this work, the big announcement that Ghana has discovered a permanent and efficacious local drug for breast cancer, may never come, or may be a long while coming.
Another major Ghanaian breakthrough seems to be Dr Ato Duncan’s drug that is said to support the immune system to naturally fight and prevent deadly diseases.
Hailed by scientists as a major breakthrough in the fight against viral diseases, the drug, COA FS has been described as “the first of its kind anywhere in the world capable of significantly restoring the human immune system”
Meanwhile, aluta continua. Ghanaian scientists are still crying for funds; Ghanaian patients with tumours suspected to be cancerous are being flown to South Africa and the UK for medical attention – at least, people with the means.
That is why the announcement by the Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, to the effect that Ghana’s Cabinet had given approval for the country’s Research Development Fund to be increased from 0.25 per cent to 1 per cent of GDP, was received with such joy.
That was in 2016.
In November 2019, the government announced again that research funds would be increased, this time, to 2.5 per cent of GDP.
But there was a question on their minds: “Where is the 1 per cent?”
Currently, the government’s budget allocation to research stands at 0.45 per cent of GDP. I still envy beauty queens.
The Noguchi announcement said their cancer drug research had been ongoing for at least, 10 years. I also happen to know that the COA FS discoveries of Dr Ato Duncan have been subjected to years of tests and peer reviews by the Mampong Plant Medicine Research Centre, NMIMR, Cape Coast University and a university in South Africa.
For a sustainable breakthrough in plant medicine, acceptable universally, we need the two cultures, namely the culture of traditional herbal knowledge and the culture of rigorous scientific discipline that comes with ability to wait patiently, especially because human lives are on the line.
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Methinks it is too easy in Ghana to earn the title, inventor. That is, when we are not heaping ‘Dr’ and ‘Prof’ on them.
The writer is the Executive Director,
Centre for Communication and Culture,
Mobile: 0208 178 680