2024-03-09 13:49:49
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In Burkina Faso where the fight for sovereignty is the watchword of the military authorities, distrust of the Western pharmaceutical industry is growing and offers an opportunity for Russia to strengthen its cooperation in the field of health.
December 22, 2023, Ouagadougou: in the “Health and Sovereignty” conference room which brings together naturopaths and researchers from several African countries, a speaker does not go unnoticed.
A former Russian diplomat and professor of international relations in Moscow, Denis Degterev explains how Russia is working to develop its pharmaceutical industry, particularly since the sanctions imposed by the West following the offensive in Ukraine. “Russia is interested in assisting African countries (in the health field) and promoting multidimensional sovereignty,” he declared to Burkina24 following the conference.
The military regime of Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who came to power in Burkina Faso through a coup d’état in September 2022, has made sovereignty one of its leitmotif, like its neighbors Mali and Niger. These Sahel countries, at the same time as they turned their backs on their historic ally and former colonial power, France, have moved closer to Russia, particularly in the military sector. But Moscow is seeking to go further by developing partnerships in the fields of culture, media and health.
Bill Gates targeted
During the conference in Ouagadougou, where several speakers wore badges in the colors of Burkina and Russia, the Western pharmaceutical industry was singled out. “Western firms, the European Union, the United States have control over health decisions in our countries” according to one of the speakers, the French activist of Togolese origin Egountchi Behanzin, followed by more than 300,000 Internet users on Facebook.
While calling for strengthened health cooperation with Russia, this “Pan-African” influencer accused Western firms of manufacturing drugs “not to treat but to create diseases”. It was he who, two months earlier, had published several videos that had gone viral, holding a health program in Burkina responsible for an epidemic of dengue fever, a disease transmitted by mosquitoes, which affected the country, causing 600 deaths in 2023.
The Target Malaria project, led by a consortium of more than 150 African and Western researchers, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to release genetically modified mosquitoes in order to eradicate diseases transmitted by the insect, such as malaria. The accusations on social networks found enough resonance for the national research center of Burkina, which works with Target Malaria, to deny any link between their research and epidemics of dengue or malaria, deeming “this false information very regrettable “.
Insufficient to calm suspicions: on February 1, Burkinabé activist Nestor Podassé published on Facebook his fears regarding research that might be “used to create biological weapons by the American side.” “But Russia helped,” he concluded, referring to the arrival in November of a delegation of Russian military doctors to fight once morest dengue fever.
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