Ede (Nigeria) (AFP)
In the research sector, Professor Christian Happi has gained respect for his fight against epidemics. Now, he wants to hoist a new generation of African researchers because "as long as Africa lacks intellectual contribution, we will always tell it what to do".
And this molecular biologist, raised in Cameroon and passed through Harvard before returning to the continent, hates being told what to do.
"I want to develop simple and inexpensive solutions, adapted to Africa and our environment," he insists in his office decorated with many diplomas, scientific awards and family photos.
At 52, Christian Happi fights against epidemics ravaging Africa and to transmit his knowledge on the continent: two essential fights in these times of pandemic of the new coronavirus, for which he has already developed a low cost test.
In Ede, a modest city in southwestern Nigeria, in 2016 he founded the African Center of Excellence for Genomic Research and Infectious Diseases (Acegid), with funding from the World Bank or wealthy foreign and Nigerian philanthropists.
At the entrance, a discreet sign sets the tone: "The strongest people are not those who crush others. They raise them".
Nearly 1,000 West African biochemistry and genomics researchers, most of them Nigerians, passed through these somewhat dated premises, awaiting the opening next year of the "largest genomic research center in Africa", a modern building nestled in the rain forest of Ede.
"It makes sense to be here in Nigeria. This country is the giant of Africa, if it falters, the whole continent will follow suit," said the researcher.
Due to its climate and very dense population, Nigeria, a country of 200 million inhabitants, experiences countless epidemic episodes every year: malaria, typhoid, meningitis, cholera, yellow fever and more recently, Ebola.
This year, Acegid researchers and students are focusing on the fight against Covid-19.
Nigeria barely registered 30,000 positive cases in early July and nearly 800 dead, but with an average of 3,000 tests per day "it is not enough," half said a public health official in Nigeria.
In Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja or Kano, in the gigantic megalopolises of several million inhabitants, where it is impossible to apply the basics of social distancing, the virus is spreading in an almost uncontrollable way.
WHO recently worried about the strong acceleration of the number of cases on the continent (more than 500,000 at the beginning of July) but all specialists agree that, without screening capacity, official figures do not reflect reality .
- Covid tests for rural clinics -
In Ede, Professor Happi's team has already developed a rapid screening test, certified by the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and being validated at national and continental level for an imminent release.
Manufacturing this Covid-19 test, which looks like a simple pregnancy test, costs around $ 3 compared to $ 100 for traditional PCR tests. No need for ultra-sophisticated equipment or imported products to know the results.
"Me, the big PCR machines used in Europe or in the United States that no public hospital here can afford, that doesn't interest me," explains Professor Happi, leading the way through the laboratories. "I want tests that the village grandmother can do in her rural clinic."
Acegid researchers, for their part, work with little equipment but among the most efficient and sophisticated. It is also the first laboratory to have sequenced the RNA (genetic reading of DNA) of the new coronavirus in Africa, at the beginning of March, just a few days after the appearance of the first case in Lagos.
A record of "incredible speed", said Chikwe Ihekweazu, director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases which primarily manages the Covid-19 crisis in Nigeria.
"Before, we would have been forced to send the samples to Europe or the United States," said Dr Ihekweazu to AFP. "The virus can evolve very quickly and thanks to sequencing we can follow this evolution more closely".
From the same generation, Professor Happi and Dr Ihekweazu know each other well and work on the same front, one in the private sector, the other in the public sector. "Prof Happi is not easy and we often have heated debates! But we are proud to share the same objective, we are committed for Nigeria and for Africa".
- "Little African and big suitcase" -
Africa, Christian Happi has never forgotten it throughout his career on the other side of the Atlantic. He also never forgot the malaria crisis that almost prevailed when he was a child.
Originally from Cameroon, where he grew up and studied biochemistry, Christian Happi first landed in London in 1998 at the age of 30.
"Little African with a big suitcase and a little lost in Heathrow", he must go to an international conference to fight against malaria, at a time when Africa has little place in scientific debates. Even those who directly concern her.
The young Cameroonian is one of the only African students invited to this conference, which was held that year in Oxford.
He quickly stood out for "his heaps of slightly crazy ideas" of wanting to use genetics in the development of vaccines and was immediately poached by the American University of Harvard to continue his research.
Student and then teacher in the prestigious university, he stayed there for a dozen years, notably to deepen his projects in the fight against malaria. The disease still kills nearly 400,000 people each year worldwide, including nearly 100,000 in Nigeria.
"Until research is done on the continent, there will be no vaccine," he said. "You have to be on the ground".
- The call of the continent -
However, it is not malaria that pushes him to return to Africa but Lassa fever. In 2007, the biologist heard for the first time of this hemorrhagic fever, close to Ebola, and the 700 deaths it causes each year in Nigeria.
To his great amazement, he discovers that the screening tests are sent to Germany. By the time you receive the results, 90% of the patients have died.
"It is totally unacceptable that a disease discovered in 1969 still has no diagnosis in 2007", rebels the professor.
A year later, he raised funds and left for Irrua, in southern Nigeria, to build a laboratory. He trains two young people fresh out of high school in the basics of micro-biology and performs the first screening tests for Lassa in Africa.
"There was nothing, neither labor nor material," he recalls. "Not even electricity. We had to use a car battery to run the PCR machine!"
Now, patients are detected more quickly and the annual epidemic peaks of Lassa, endemic to Nigeria, cause between 100 and 200 deaths per year.
Armed with this experience, the professor founded Acegid and has since gone from "epidemic to epidemic", as he says. He recently discovered two other viruses (Ekpoma 1 and 2), among the hundreds that inhabit the region's rainforests.
"Here, doctors often do not know what their patients are suffering from. They test for malaria, typhoid ... and afterwards, they no longer know" what disease it is, comments the researcher.
Deepening research on infectious diseases in Africa is fundamental. But the cost is high and even if donors are aware of the urgency, all the more in view of the current pandemic, the obstacles are numerous.
Many researchers, doctors, healthcare staff always prefer to work abroad, for better wages or simply because they often do not have the means to exercise their profession at home.
"Young African students can be trained in the best universities in the world, but if there is no structure to welcome them to Africa once their diploma is in their pocket, it is useless," he said.
- Molecular biology and computer coding -
Idowu Olawoye, he studied molecular biology and computer coding in England before returning in 2016. Living in the small town of Ede, more than six hours away from the economic capital Lagos does not weigh on him, assures- he. "I especially want to participate in the development of my country".
At barely 27 years old, he is currently processing Covid-19 DNA sequencing data for Nigeria: "You see, by reading the DNA of the virus, we can see where it went. It's like if I read his passport, "popularizes as much as he can, the young doctoral student by showing diagrams on a state-of-the-art iMac.
Her colleague Jessica Uwamibe also wanted at all costs "to feel useful". A 29-year-old molecular biologist, she was just starting her studies at the University of Redeemer's in Ede when the Ebola epidemic broke out in West Africa in 2014.
Six years later, it finalizes the final details for the release of Covid-19 rapid tests, developed on the same model as those imagined for Lassa and Ebola, and is already working on the search for a vaccine based on the genomic data discovered. on patients in Nigeria.
"Why go elsewhere?" Asked the young woman. "Here we have the diseases and now we have the knowledge and the equipment."
© 2020 AFP