Kinshasa (AFP)

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is ready to welcome the trials of a future vaccine against Covid-19, said on Friday the Congolese official of the fight against the pandemic Jean-Jacques Muyembe, citing as an example the vaccines used on an experimental basis in the face of the current Ebola epidemic.

"We have been chosen to do these trials. The vaccine will be produced in the United States, Canada or China. We are candidates to do the trials here at home," said Professor Muyembe, whose These remarks aroused very strong reactions in several Congolese refusing to be "guinea pigs".

"Perhaps around July, August we can already start to have clinical trials of this vaccine," added the Congolese virologist, who spoke to the press alongside the American ambassador to the DRC Mike Hammer.

"The Covid at some point will be uncontrollable," detailed the professor joined by AFP in the evening. "The only way to control it will be the vaccine, just like Ebola. It is the vaccine that has helped us end the Ebola epidemic."

The end of the tenth Ebola epidemic in the DRC is to be proclaimed on April 12 after killing more than 2,200 people in the east of the country since its declaration on August 1, 2018.

More than 320,000 people have benefited from two vaccines used on an experimental basis.

The first vaccine used in more than 300,000 doses "has recently been pre-qualified for approval," health officials said.

Dr. Muyembe's remarks aroused anger and incomprehension among Internet users.

"Dear doctors, scientists and pharmaceutical empires. When you’ve finished testing your # Covid19 vaccines on animals, before you even consider trying it on Africans, a people you never cared about, try it for yourself ", storms the Swedish-Congolese musician Mohombi on Twitter.

A sequence on French television showing two researchers wondering live about the advisability of testing a vaccine in Africa had just aroused anger.

"If I can be provocative, shouldn't we do this study in Africa, where there are no masks, no treatment, no resuscitation, a bit like it is done elsewhere on some studies with AIDS, where in prostitutes we try things because we know they are highly exposed? "said one of the doctors, Jean-Paul Mira, head of the intensive care and intensive care unit at the Parisian hospital Cochin.

"No, Africans are not guinea pigs!", Indignant the French association SOS Racisme in a press release.

Jean-Paul Mira offered his "sincere apologies" to "those who were struck, shocked, who felt insulted by remarks that I made awkwardly".

© 2020 AFP