KENYA-HEALTH: Aids Drug Controversy Just Won’t Go Away

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Jun 24 1996 (IPS) - The controversy surrounding Kenyan professor Arthur Obel’s Pearl Omega just won’t go away and it’s not just in the media that it is being discussed.

In bars, restaurants, buses, taxis, offices, the drug — which Obel says cures AIDS — often slips into conversations. This is hardly surprising: Pearl Omega had raised many a hope in a country where AIDS is estimated to affect one in 10,000 people.

“We want to know more about whether the drug works, whether seven HIV carriers (out of 32) who took Pearl Omega really tested HIV-negative after an 18-month trial, as Obel claims,” said Joyce, a hawker in Nairobi’s sprawling slum, Kibera.

Joyce, who refused to disclose her surname, said she saw no reason why Obel’s drug should be banned in Kenya if it offers hope to millions of sufferers around the world.

In May, the country’s Pharmacy and Poisons Board, which is responsible for registering drugs, barred the manufacture, distribution and sale of Pearl Omega after the researcher declined to disclose his formula.

The board, in accordance with the Pharmacy and Poisons Act, had requested technical data and samples of Pearl Omega from Obel so as to help it establish the drug’s effectiveness and find out whether scientific norms were followed in its manufacture.

He refused, arguing that disclosing the formula would expose the drug to ‘intellectual property thieves’.

The Board’s chairman, Dr Richard Baraza, reminded Obel that doctors depended on his institution “to ensure that all pharmaceutical substances administered to patients are safe, of sound quality, efficacious and available in sufficient quality when registered”.

Since he announced the drug in March, Obel has been at the receiving end of a barrage of criticism, including from the Aids Society of Kenya, which is challenging him in court.

The society is seeking a court order to uphold its view that Pearl Omega is no cure for the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

Undaunted by the criticism, Obel recently announced that he was developing Pearl Omega into a vaccine that would be ready within six months. This has alarmed the Aids Society of Kenya as well as influential Kenyans, including Hilary N’gweno, publisher of the ‘Weekly Review’ magazine.

Writing in the Review recently, he argued that “there is only one way Prof. Obel can convince anyone that his vaccine works.

“Let him test it on himself. Let him administer the vaccine to himself in the presence of doctors and then let him be exposed to HIV either through intravenous methods or repeated unprotected sex with a certified HIV-positive person or preferably one with full blown AIDS.

“This is a challenge that Prof. Obel should not find difficult to take up if he is so sure about the efficacy of his vaccine. It is a challenge that does not entail complicated scientific protocols.

“Indeed, a scientist experimenting on himself would not be in the best tradition of scientific inquiry, but then Prof. Obel does not seem to believe in traditional scientific protocol. So, he should not consider what we are suggesting as outrageous. If one year later he is still HIV-negative, then there will be plenty of grounds for taking his vaccine claims seriously and administering it to a wider group of people in a properly controlled experiment.”

However, another writer, Rosemary Amondi, defended Obel.

“The issue of what research protocol Prof. Obel used is of no consequence to an AIDS victim,” she wrote in the Jun. 23 issue of the ‘Sunday Nation’. “A healthy man has all the time to pursue the chronology of events in relation to the drug, but a dying man will leave no medicine untouched until he finds a cure while he can.

“I would advise the good professor to apply for a hotline,” she added.

Obel is a chief scientist in President Daniel Arap Moi’s office. He was linked to the development of Kemron, which in 1989 was touted as an AIDS cure but failed to prove its worth under scrutiny.

For Pearl Omega to be registered, says a source in the Ministry of Health, “it will require extensive tests which can take a period of not less than three years in order for it to be approved.”

He said even drugs certified in other countries have to be tested before being accepted for use in Kenya. These include AZT, used to check the progression of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) which causes AIDS.

It’s not just Pearl Omega which is controversial. Statements made by the professor himself have also created quite a stir here.

In a move widely seen here as aimed at promoting Pearl Omega, Obel last month accused the U.N. World Health Organisation (WHO) of pledging to supply HIV-positive pregnant women in Kenya with AZT while it knew the drug had serious side effects.

“We know that those who use this treatment die within 18 months, not because of AIDS-related diseases but due to severe bone marrow depression,” he was quoted as saying in a May 31 lecture at the Kenyatta University here.

He also alleged that condoms exported to Third World countries were infected with HIV. “As I travelled around the world, I took samples of condoms marked for export to Africa and other countries (sic) and did tests on them in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and found they were all laced with the virus,” he claimed.

To clear up the fears generated by Obel’s claims, the University of Nairobi’s college of biological and physical sciences has agreed to conduct tests on condoms marketed here.

The college’s principal, Prof. F.N. Onyango, said the institution had a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) machine which can pick AIDS viral genetic material and thus test the safety of imported condoms.

Kenyan government officials had initially appeared to back Pearl Omega but President Moi recently said there was no known cure for AIDS and instead urged Kenyans to behave “morally”.