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| Dr. Bisong Henry, working to keep Vanhivax alive |
It is now four years since the venerated professor of Medicine and Surgery, Anomah Ngu Victor, passed on. Before his death Prof. Anomah Ngu had invented a therapeutic vaccine (Vanhivax) for the treatment of HIV positive patients. In this interview with Doctor Bisong Henry, manager of Prof. Anomah Ngu’s Clinique de L’Espoir in Essos Yaounde, he said among other things that Vanhivax is well alive, and more and more patients are availing themselves to benefit from its therapeutic qualities. Dr. Bisong Henry was interviewed by The Median’s Editor, Ojong Steven Ayukogem, on the sidelines of a special holy mass celebrated on Saturday, 13 June 2015, at the Clinique de L’Espoir to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Prof’s death. Below are excerpts of the interesting interview.
Doctor, what is the situation of prof. Anomah Ngu’s AIDS vaccine project four years after his passing?
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk on vanhivax. I should say Vanhivax has improved greatly; we have put in a protocol which runs for one and a half years. It is a very steady protocol with achievable results. Also, what we have been doing in the past years is trying to standardize the vaccine. The standardization process has 2 phases: The fist is to make it convenient for the patients so that you can have better compliance and without compromising the result at the end. The second is to lower the cost. So far, we have been able to achieve these goals and we are already in the experimental phase to apply this protocol.
Do you receive support from the government or some foreign bodies for this important research?
Not actually. As far as financial support is concerned I hasten to say no. We are a self-running research facility; for now we rely solely on our own means to run the clinic and the research. However the government sometime ago asked us to come up with a proposal. We have since submitted the proposal but nothing has happened after that.
So where do you get the funds to carry on with the research giving that such medical research is essentially cost intensive?
We use essentially funds raised from consultation and treatment fees. We sensitize the patients on the need to make sacrifices. We also diversify our services to bring in money from other sources.
Who runs the research project now that Prof. Anomah Ngu is no longer there?
Well, without trying to be ambitious I would say the research is now in the hands of my humble self and of course the other members of the Vanhivax team including the lab technicians and nurses. That notwithstanding, we also have professors who worked with Prof. before who are still part of the team. Even though most of them are not here with us, we from time to time consult them for advice.
So you are affirming that Vanhivax is not lying in state; it is quite alive?
Sure, Vanhivax is alive! It is even about to explode. Having worked so hard to come up with this steady protocol we are about to explode and very soon it will be out there in the best form for Cameroonians, for Africans and the world.
Do you have recent statistics on the success rate of Vahivax?
Statistically I can talk of about 80% success rate. Technically when you are treating an HIV positive patient, what you try to do is to minimize opportunistic diseases, bring down the patient’s viral load and increase his CD4 count. In short your goal is to improve the immune system of the patient. At the same time the ultimate goal is to convert the patient from sero-positive to a healthy sero-negative individual. As far as improving the patients’ immune condition concerned we have something like 95% success rate. For the ultimate cure it is a bit difficult. So far we have had about 2 more cases of people that moved from sero-positive to sero-negative. And that is where we are concentrating our work now.
Are you saying that Vanhivax had completely cured some patients of HIV in the past?
Yes some patients had been cured in the passed. It was even published in the Cameroon Academy of Science journal in 2007. So we are now working to make sure there is some consistency. But at the same time we have to find patients who actually fit into the criteria and patients who readily comply with the treatment. We realize that some time in the course of the treatment some patients actually fall out of the regime because of poor compliance; others get pregnant and abandon the treatment program.
How do you react to remarks from some observers that you are using human beings as guinea pigs for your research on Vahivax!
The first point is that we are not dealing with kids. Secondly we have authorization from the government. Then we also have a consent form which patients must feel and sign before treatment is engaged. So it is not a question of using people as guinea pigs. People come by their own volition and they keep coming because they have seen the benefits. So the whole idea of using people as guinea pigs in completely erroneous; we deal with adults who consent before we engage the treatment.
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