The potentials for disaster and humanitarian crisis along the coastal state of West Africa is increasingly stark, according to disaster management experts, and countries within the sub-region need to develop programmes to manage these.
Some of the experts, gathered recently in Abuja, under a Humanitarian Future Programme (HFP) of the ECOWAS Commission and the Kings College, London, also said the possibilities of humanitarian crisis is intensifying in distinctly different ways at local and regional levels.
They point at a recent discovery that Nigeria’s waterways was under threat. Marine scientists recently found leakages from an underground pipe carrying gas through the water channel at the Tin Can inland- Liverpool Bridge.
Tunde Agboola, a professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Ibadan presented some crisis scenarios that may occur in West Africa in the nearest future if contingency plans are not developed against it.
One of such scenarios was the possibility of a gas fire along the West African coast where the pipelines for the West African Gas
Pipeline is currently laid.
According to Mr Agboola, an outbreak of such fire has the potentials of displacing million of inhabitants in about five member states, leading to mass movement of people within and outside the region.
Other issues that may led to a possible humanitarian crisis in the region, according to him, include: oil spillage, gas blow out, sea surge, sudden sea level rise, water pollution and salt water intrusion.
“In the next two decades virtually all West African coastal states (12 states) could emerge as commercial oil and gas producers,” he said. “While this could constitute a driver and catalyst for economic growth and development, such infrastructure will actually increase the sub-region’s vulnerability to some type of disaster.”
He was of the opinion that should any of the crisis occur, cities along the West African coast would submerge, all economic gains of the region would be lost, the region’s flora and fauna would also be lost and underground water would be polluted.
He was not the only one with dire predictions. Mary Mye-Kamara, Director, Disaster Management Department, Office of the National Security, Sierra Leone said the West African sub-region is prone to more disasters than was hitherto imagined.
Ms. Mye-Kamara cited the River Niger, which flows through five states in the region as another potential candidate for disaster, in view of the present use of the river.
“The region was prone to health pandemic as a result of constant dumping of both solid and liquid domestic waste and industrial toxic waste into the river”, she said, adding, “this would lead to the deterioration of water quality, ground water pollution - which might also arise from mining activities -deforestation and flooding transport sediments into water bodies”.
Then there is the fear of a decrease in water volume in the region, which the governments of Nigeria, Niger and Mali are constantly talking about. A major decrease could lead to conflicts over electricity generation and increase in toxicity caused by decreasing dilution.
“There will be loss of jobs and livelihood, loss of biodiversity, displacement of fishing communities and localisation of conflicts,’’ Mye-Kamara said.
Randolph Kent, the Kings College’s Director of Humanitarian Programme however warned that the west African sub-region lacked the capacity to cope with the envisaged calamities.
“The region’s humanitarian sector faces difficulties in anticipating and responding adequately to emerging crisis,” he said. “This is due, in part, to the ways in which many organisations within the sector thinks.
“Population growth, mass migration, global warming, natural resource scarcity, toxic waste, social inequality and outmoded institutions are just some of the stark trends and factors that humankind must face; but, here in West Africa, confronting these is still a challenge”, he said.
He cautioned that the strategic capabilities of most organisations within the sub-region were uneven and that their focus is generally narrow and short-term.
An official of the ECOWAS Commission confessed as much. Mohammed Ibrahim, the Principal Programme Officer, Disaster Risk Reduction at the Commission said the region was at the cross road regarding how to prevent what could be one of the greatest humanitarian crisis of this century.
Mr. Ibrahim said that all the scenarios presented by scientists on the possibility of a possible disaster have started manifesting, as the sea current now was stronger than it uses to be.
He, however, said the Commission has the requisite organs to articulate viable options and strategies to mitigate the possible disasters.
Mr. Agboola, however, said the sub-region has to rely on indigenous knowledge to overcome any disaster. But the experts all agreed on one thing: the creation of a platform that would bring policy makers and scientists in the region together to find solutions to the envisaged crisis.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Nigeria’s plants provide cures for global diseases
Nigeria's reputation as a global centre for drug discovery has received another boost with the announcement of a research utilising tea leaves and fruit from the wild, which is showing positive results against type-2 diabetes.
The research, conducted at the University of Copenhagen and published in Alphagalileo, said the researchers at the University harvested the ingredients for the tea, totalling approximately fifty kilos of leaves and three hundred kilos of fruits, from the wild in Nigeria.
As scientists and researchers direct their attention to natural products to combat the growing global disease burden, they are discovering the wealth within Nigeria-the country with the largest moist equatorial forest and plant endemism in Africa.
Of 150,000 plant species or higher plants estimated to be present in tropical countries, about 30,000 are found in Africa. Nigeria accounts for three quarter of the African estimate.
Currently, tea leaves and other fruits from Nigeria's wild are undergoing various investigations in laboratories across the world in an attempt to find solution to some of the diseases that have ravaged humanity.
The University of Copenhagen treated the tea exactly as local healers would do: boil the leaves, young stalks and fruit and filter the liquid.
The researchers, including a Nigerian, Joan Campbell-Toftel, tested the tea on genetically diabetic mice. The results of the tests, according to the scientists, shows that six weeks of daily treatment with the African tea, combined with a low-fat diet, resulted in changes in the combination and amount of fat in the animals' eyes and protection of the fragile pancreas of the mice.
The researchers have also recently completed a four-month clinical test on 23 patients with type-2 diabetes and expressed satisfaction with the result.
The research subjects drank 750ml of tea each day. The cure appears to differentiate itself from other current type-2 diabetes treatments because the tea does not initially affect the sugar content of the blood," said Mr. Campbell-Tofte. "But after four months of treatment with tea, we can, however, see a significant increase in glucose tolerance."
From sickle cell to HIV
In 2004, some leaves from Nigeria had, against all odds, brought relief to sickle cell sufferers across the globe when researchers at the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD), banking on indigenous knowledge of the use of herbs, produced NIPRISAN, a potent drug for the management of sickle cell.
The drug was acknowledged by former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, at a ceremony to mark its formal launch, in 2007, as the only potent treatment of sickle cell globally. The achievement was picked up by an American company, Xechem International Pharmaceutical Company, which bought the right from the Nigerian government to mass produce and market the drug now known as NICOSAN.
The license granted the company by government was withdrawn in March 2009, following the inability of the company to meet conditions contained in the agreement regarding the availability and affordability of the drug.
Currently, NIPRD and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, USA, are collaborating on a research using Nigerian leaves, which is showing good signs in the treatment of Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
"US and Nigerian scientists at NIPRD are currently engaged in a joint research activity to test the efficacy of remedies for tuberculosis used by traditional healers in Nigeria. It is our hope that this collaboration continues and results in better therapeutic products," US Ambassador to Nigeria, Robin Sanders, said recently.
At the Institute for Advanced Medical Research Training, University of Ibadan, research has advanced on a discovery capable of reducing the global malaria mortality, which currently accounts for over two million deaths annually.
Edith Ajaiyeoba of the Department of Pharmcognosy at the University of Ibadan said the prospect of new drugs coming out of Nigeria's wild was brighter now than ever, in view of collaboration with other international research laboratories.
William Folk, principal investigator at the International Centre for Indigenous Phytotherapy Studies, University of Missouri-Columbia, said he was optimistic that the possibility of developing a natural based drug for HIV/AIDS from the wild of Africa was high.
"In West Africa, there are well documented uses of indigenous plant spices used to treat malaria, diarrhoea, fever, pneumonia, tuberculosis, cryptococcal meningitis, oral candidiasis, herpes and other STI infections," he said.
Muhammed Gwarzo of Bayero University, Kano. Mr. Gwarzo said Nigerian herbs administered by traditional healers to HIV-infected individuals has shown that the herbals, if properly evaluated, would provide a cure to the dreaded virus.
An anti-tuberculosis drug research conducted at NIPRD, by Nneka Ibekwe and others, also showed that of the 86 plants-based recipes used by Nigerian traditional medicine practitioners for the treatment of tuberculosis, about 60 percent were active from weak to high degrees.
Inyang Uford, Director General of NIPRD, said the institute was in the vanguard of investigating plant species based on ethnomedical information. "The potentials and efficacy of Nigeria's leaves is no longer in doubt but how the country prepares itself to spearhead and encourage research into the wild to ensure it benefits from the global multi-billion dollar drug industry is what is at stake," he said.
The research, conducted at the University of Copenhagen and published in Alphagalileo, said the researchers at the University harvested the ingredients for the tea, totalling approximately fifty kilos of leaves and three hundred kilos of fruits, from the wild in Nigeria.
As scientists and researchers direct their attention to natural products to combat the growing global disease burden, they are discovering the wealth within Nigeria-the country with the largest moist equatorial forest and plant endemism in Africa.
Of 150,000 plant species or higher plants estimated to be present in tropical countries, about 30,000 are found in Africa. Nigeria accounts for three quarter of the African estimate.
Currently, tea leaves and other fruits from Nigeria's wild are undergoing various investigations in laboratories across the world in an attempt to find solution to some of the diseases that have ravaged humanity.
The University of Copenhagen treated the tea exactly as local healers would do: boil the leaves, young stalks and fruit and filter the liquid.
The researchers, including a Nigerian, Joan Campbell-Toftel, tested the tea on genetically diabetic mice. The results of the tests, according to the scientists, shows that six weeks of daily treatment with the African tea, combined with a low-fat diet, resulted in changes in the combination and amount of fat in the animals' eyes and protection of the fragile pancreas of the mice.
The researchers have also recently completed a four-month clinical test on 23 patients with type-2 diabetes and expressed satisfaction with the result.
The research subjects drank 750ml of tea each day. The cure appears to differentiate itself from other current type-2 diabetes treatments because the tea does not initially affect the sugar content of the blood," said Mr. Campbell-Tofte. "But after four months of treatment with tea, we can, however, see a significant increase in glucose tolerance."
From sickle cell to HIV
In 2004, some leaves from Nigeria had, against all odds, brought relief to sickle cell sufferers across the globe when researchers at the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD), banking on indigenous knowledge of the use of herbs, produced NIPRISAN, a potent drug for the management of sickle cell.
The drug was acknowledged by former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, at a ceremony to mark its formal launch, in 2007, as the only potent treatment of sickle cell globally. The achievement was picked up by an American company, Xechem International Pharmaceutical Company, which bought the right from the Nigerian government to mass produce and market the drug now known as NICOSAN.
The license granted the company by government was withdrawn in March 2009, following the inability of the company to meet conditions contained in the agreement regarding the availability and affordability of the drug.
Currently, NIPRD and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, USA, are collaborating on a research using Nigerian leaves, which is showing good signs in the treatment of Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
"US and Nigerian scientists at NIPRD are currently engaged in a joint research activity to test the efficacy of remedies for tuberculosis used by traditional healers in Nigeria. It is our hope that this collaboration continues and results in better therapeutic products," US Ambassador to Nigeria, Robin Sanders, said recently.
At the Institute for Advanced Medical Research Training, University of Ibadan, research has advanced on a discovery capable of reducing the global malaria mortality, which currently accounts for over two million deaths annually.
Edith Ajaiyeoba of the Department of Pharmcognosy at the University of Ibadan said the prospect of new drugs coming out of Nigeria's wild was brighter now than ever, in view of collaboration with other international research laboratories.
William Folk, principal investigator at the International Centre for Indigenous Phytotherapy Studies, University of Missouri-Columbia, said he was optimistic that the possibility of developing a natural based drug for HIV/AIDS from the wild of Africa was high.
"In West Africa, there are well documented uses of indigenous plant spices used to treat malaria, diarrhoea, fever, pneumonia, tuberculosis, cryptococcal meningitis, oral candidiasis, herpes and other STI infections," he said.
Muhammed Gwarzo of Bayero University, Kano. Mr. Gwarzo said Nigerian herbs administered by traditional healers to HIV-infected individuals has shown that the herbals, if properly evaluated, would provide a cure to the dreaded virus.
An anti-tuberculosis drug research conducted at NIPRD, by Nneka Ibekwe and others, also showed that of the 86 plants-based recipes used by Nigerian traditional medicine practitioners for the treatment of tuberculosis, about 60 percent were active from weak to high degrees.
Inyang Uford, Director General of NIPRD, said the institute was in the vanguard of investigating plant species based on ethnomedical information. "The potentials and efficacy of Nigeria's leaves is no longer in doubt but how the country prepares itself to spearhead and encourage research into the wild to ensure it benefits from the global multi-billion dollar drug industry is what is at stake," he said.
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