Popular Protest:

‘No’ Ebola vaccine test in Abakwa town
- Bamenda Populations warn Gov’t
A clinical campaign to test the Ebola vaccine to make sure it is safe at the Bamenda Regional Hospital which was one of the coordination units in Cameroon has been suspended.
    Although the reasons for the suspension are still very fuzzy, speculations are rife that the decision was motivated by a wild spate of protests from some concerned civil society organizations, social workers, Southern Cameroon National Council and some pressmen who confronted the authorities of the Bamenda Regional Hospital on the campaign.
    “It should be recalled that in the fight against this worst killer disease, the World Health Organization, WHO, made it abundantly clear that neither cure nor vaccine has yet been found. To the best of our knowledge, WHO which faithfully monitors global health and seeks solutions has not made any declarations” fumed Nfor Ngala Nfor, National Chairman of the SCNC.
    “We also firmly believe that if the WHO established a vaccine for this killer disease, it will first announce and prior attention will be turned to Liberia, Guinea (Conakry) and Sierra Leone. Where from comes the Ebola vaccine fit for trail only for Bamenda where cases of the Ebola outbreak have not been reported” Nfor Ngala Nfor questioned.  

    The Cameroon Teachers Trade Union led by its Executive Secretary, Tassanf Wilfred who stormed the trail center questioned why the trail was being conducted in Bamenda at the Bamenda Regional Hospital which does not even have standard laboratories or equipment.
    Bertrand Mvongo, a renowned civil societyactivist, first protested the vaccine trials by petitioning President Biya, condemningthe exercise which was expected to run from October 2015 to October 2016. He said Cameroonians are not guinea pigs and need to be treated with respect and pleaded with the head of state to prevent the minister of public health from continuing the process.
    However, before the suspension which a source at the Bamenda Testing Center says started in October, 2015, over 150 persons had been vaccinated. The experiment required the participation of 400 people in Cameroon – 200 at the Bamenda Regional Hospital and 200 at the Centre Pasteur in Yaounde.
Unconfirmed sources say volunteers were not supposed to receive payments for taking part in the experiments, but were to receive transport money, free diagnosis for other diseases, and were to be treated free of charge if the vaccine generated undesired effects.
    The guarantee for free treatment is contained in insurance policies covered by the GSK for each volunteer, a government statement said. Even though the amount doled out to volunteers as ‘transport money’ remained undisclosed, those who were tricked into taking the vaccine later confessed that they were given between 5,000 FCFA and 10,000FCFA.