PASSING OF ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE CAMEROONIANS OF OUR TIME: VICTOR ANOMAH NGU

I already flashed the passing of VAN in my last posting. Professor Victor Anomah Ngu, basic scientist, award-winning oncologist, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Yaounde, former Chancellor of the University of Buea (UB), former Minister of Public Health, former President of the Cameroon Academy of Sciences, President of the Bernard Fonlon Society, author of the candidate HIV vaccine VANHIVAX, passed on to eternity on Tuesday 14 June 2011.

Since the death of Bernard Fonlon on 26 August 1986, no other death of an academic and public figure has been received with so much shock and fervor here in Cameroon as that of Victor Anomah Ngu. There are many parallels between Fonlon and Ngu: exceptional intellectual endowments, remarkable moral integrity, spirit of humility and poverty, visible genuine commitment to undiscriminating service of the public, deep religiousity/spirituality, etc.  Quite incidentally and interestingly enough Fonlon and Ngu were the greatest admirers of each other.  Until his death last month, Victor Anomah Ngu was still the President of the Bernard Fonlon Society (BFS), formed shortly after the latter’s death to promote his ideas, ideals, and remarkable life values. Fonlon himself had written a book of poems dedicated to the remarkable life and achievements of Victor Anomah Ngu.

In medical and scientific circles, Victor Anomah Ngu will perhaps most be remembered not only for his cancer researches but also for his candidate vaccine against the HIV/AIDS epidemic, VANHIVAX, which to date, remains both scientifically un-validated and un-falsified. In 2000, he and I had made a joint presentation on VANHIVAX at the 5^th World Congress of Bioethics in London. Please find it here attached. Download VANHIVAX, London 2000 The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) gave us a joint interview immediately after our joint lecture. It was a fairly long interview of about one hour, during which Ngu responded to the mainly scientific questions while I handled the general and ethical ones. Quite curiously, when I later emailed the journalist, the very well-known Richard Black, requesting a transcript of our interview, he responded that he was very sorry but his recording machine was faulty that day and did not register the interview. I stretched my credulity and believed him, but I had probably just been introduced to the international politics of HIV/AIDS vaccine research.

In 2005 a big meeting of the African Aids Vaccine Programme (AAVP) was being organized in Yaounde, Cameroon, by the World Health Organization (WHO). I was invited to this meeting but when the programme of the meeting was sent to me, I noticed with shock that Professor Ngu was not invited to the meeting. I immediately sent the following letter to the organizer of the meeting:

 

Dear Dr. Coumba,

 Following our brief discussion in Montreal regarding the forthcoming AAVP conference in Yaounde (17-19 October, 2005), and having now had a look at the preliminary agenda of the meeting, I would like to make the following suggestion.

I suggest that you find space in the programme to invite Professor Victor Anomah Ngu to make a presentation of his claims to have a candidate AIDS Vaccine, VANHIVAX. Although his claims may not be scientifically uncontroversial, this is no good reason for not hearing him out but rather a very good reason for letting him present his idea so that other scientists might assess it in all scientific rigor and objectivity. If the adjective “African” in THE AFRICAN AIDS VACCINE PROGRAMME, has any real significance, it would surely be a little surprising to hold such a conference in Cameroon while completely ignoring Anomah Ngu and his claims.

I have recently had a look at some of the data of his AIDS patients, and the drop in viral load, increase in CD4 count, and positive to negative sero-conversions that his method seems capable of achieving in the therapeutic domain, are nothing if not remarkable. He certainly does seem to have a “therapeutic vaccine” but does he also have a credible “preventive candidate vaccine” as he has been claiming all along? This is the question that every educated Cameroonian, let alone Cameroon scientists, would like to have answered. Cameroonians are increasingly aware of the hope held out by VANHIVAX, as a visit to Ngu’s clinic would demonstrate. The ministry of health here is not unaware of this and I believe that it fully supports Ngu’s efforts even if it may lack the material and technical means to assist him carry out “proof of concept” or “proof of product” tests.

As you may or may not be aware, there is increasing public skepticism in this country, reinforced by controversies such as that of the recent tenofovir trials in Douala, towards clinical trials, which are increasingly being perceived, not as rays of hope for the myriad of epidemics and diseases plaguing Africans, but as Euro-American driven projects exploiting our naivety, poverty, ignorance, and vulnerabilities for their own benefit. If this consciousness is permitted to deepen, it would not augur well for the eventual trials and hopeful discovery of successful vaccines, including an AIDS vaccine. Excluding Anomah Ngu from the Yaounde meeting would more than likely help to deepen such consciousness. It may interest you also to know that I have come across articulate people here in Cameroon who strongly are of the opinion that the WHO is an organization behind which Euro-Americans hide to carry out neo-colonialism in disguise. I believe that the best way to tackle such views is sometimes to openly discuss them and not to omit or commit any acts which might tend to confirm them.

As an ethicist, invited to this meeting in that capacity, I feel duty-bound to bring the above to your attention; it is not meant to be an uninvited criticism of the agenda of this very important meeting and I hope that you will not take it in that light.

Best wishes.

Godfrey

 Kindly find here attached, the funeral programme for Victor Anomah Ngu.Download Funeral Program-VAN and below are some pictures of Victor Anomah Ngu at the 2000 World Congress of Bioethics

 

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