False adverts affects disease prevention efforts
*China has good lessons for Tanzania.

By Aloyce Menda

“Malaria inaenezwa na mbu aumaye usiku wa manane tu”, is a current Kiswahili adverts aired by some radio and television studios. In English translation the adverts means that malaria is only spread by a mosquito that bites one during or immediate after mid-night hours.

The advert goes with a strong health advice for all families to use chemically treated mosquito nets in their bedrooms as the best prevention against malaria spread. It concludes that the best and only sure prevention against night mosquitoes which spread malaria is “Mbu-net” treated with “Ngao”, a modern treatment chemical that repels mosquitoes.

The advert sounds genuine it is irrefutable fact that the blood-sucking mosquitoes are more aggressive during night hours. Above that it is a proved scientific fact that some chemically treated bed nets do repel mosquitoes. What is not true is the statement that “malaria is only spread by a mosquito that bites one during or immediate after mid-night hours”.

The mosquito species that spread malaria parasites can bite human beings any time anywhere they can survive. So the best prevention against malaria spread is not treated mosquito nets but environmental cleanliness to ensure that mosquitoes have no breeding sites.

While health officers could be busy in health programmes to ensure health environment that lack mosquito breeding areas, the community may ignore them due to information spread by false adverts. And that is just a tip of an iceberg. There are so many falsified adverts pertaining to health and medical field.

Along the Sam Nujoma Road in Mwenge area of Dar es Salaam city, one Kiswahili adverts board reads; (English translation in brackets): “Mganga wa Jadi” (Traditional Medicine Doctor); “Kuchanjia Uume” (Treatment of penius); “Nguvu za kiume”(Manhood or erection strength); “Kinga aina zote”(Prevention of all kinds); “Magonjwa sugu” (Chronic diseases); “Mengi zaidi fika ofisini” (For more information come in the office). Below the advert is an arrow indicating the location of the office and mobile telephone number, 0745-428525.

There are many genuine traditional medicine doctors and even the Ministry of Health recognizes them. However, the question remains on what they actually do vis a vis most of their advertisements. Is there any traditional medicine practitioner who can prevent or treat all types of diseases?

The media, particularly the newspapers have often received and advertised for their clients even when the editors or publishers are quite aware that some information in the adverts is purely false. Some editors and media owners wrongly think that they are not liable to answer charges for defamation or slander in cases of falsified adverts.

This wrong conception has led to many editors and media owners to accept and publish of transmit any adverts provided they get paid. Probably their only fear is defamation or slander against the government.


LESSONS FROM CHINA

Four years ago, the Chinese health authorities issued a ban on advertisements for medicines that claim to combat drug-addiction, cure cancer and AIDS, and deal with sexual dysfunction. It was a very better pill that affected very much the Chinese community of traditional medicine practitioners, which is the largest in the world.

But the health authorities have to legally impose the ban regardless, of their previous efforts to promote the Chinese traditional medicine doctors, from whom the famous acupuncture medical science was developed. There was a strong criticism against the ban but the Chinese government adhered to their decision.

The Chinese State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) said the year 2000 ban was necessary because most adverts were misguiding consumers and hence should not be published in newspapers or transmitted in the China radio or television stations.

On top of that the administration also prohibited adverts for pharmaceuticals products that are still in the experimental stage or have been officially banned from production, sale and use by national- or provincial-level drug administration institutions.

One of the effects of the ban is that many Chinese traditions medicine practitioners closed their services in China and migrated to developed countries. No doubt some came to Tanzania because it was during that year (2000) and afterward that many Chinese medical clinics were opened in the Dar es Salaam city.

In the same year, one medical doctor from the Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH) cautioned in a newspaper opinion article that most of herbs that foreign traditional doctors were prescribing to their patients in Tanzania are mere raw materials used to make modern medicine in developed countries.

If that is true it means these traditional medicine practitioners are not giving anything unique apart from what modern medicine can offer. Actually they may be offering inferior treatment because their herbs are not refine to eliminated elements that can cause negative health effects. Above that the modern medicine is prescribed according to scientific measurements, while most of traditional medicines are not.

Today Chinese communities have learned that their health authorities had no any malice intentions against traditional healers when they banned false adverts in 2000. Recently the Chinese State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) approved the country's first human trial of a potential HIV/AIDS vaccine. The phase I clinical trial will test the vaccine's safety on thirty volunteers.

The results will determine whether the vaccine will go on to phase II and III trials to test its safety and efficacy in more detail.

The vaccine, jointly developed by Changchun BCHT Pharmaceutical Company and Changchun-based Jilin University, has already been tested on monkeys. Researchers gave monkeys the potential vaccine then infected them with the HIV virus, and found no abnormal reactions to the drug, according to the SFDA.

The vaccine has also passed the viral safety test of China's National Institute for the Control of Pharmaceutical and Biological Products.

SFDA officials said on November 25, 2004 that a detailed plan for the clinical trial will be released in January 2005. The phase I trial will then be undertaken in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, in southern China. The trial will be funded entirely by Changchun BCHT, which plans to invest US$12.1 million in the vaccine.

Zeng Yi, chief scientist of the China Centre for HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control, estimates that it would take at least five years for a potential HIV/AIDS vaccine to complete phases I to III of clinical trials.

According to the SFDA, research on the potential HIV/AIDS vaccine against local strains of the virus began in 1996.

The so-called 'compound vaccine' consists of a DNA vaccine and a recombinant adenovirus vector, which will be injected separately into volunteers. Together, the two components can stimulate the production of antibodies against HIV/AIDS.

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative has said dozens of potential vaccines are being tested worldwide, and more than 70 human clinical trials have taken place although none has yet looked set to conquer the virus.

Other researchers in China, including a team led by Zeng, are developing at least seven more HIV/AIDS vaccines, but none of these has so far received approval for human testing.

The Ministry of Health estimates that there are 840,000 HIV carriers in China, and about 80,000 patients with full-blown AIDS have been reported. Experts warn that without effective control measures, the number of HIV carriers could exceed ten million by 2010.
ENDS

Posted By: ALOYCE MENDA