Sometimes, making a virtue of necessity, the winning formula is found. And the last can become the first. This is what is happening in Africa with the Covid-19 pandemic: how many of us took it almost for granted, a few months ago, that there would be a massacre on the black continent, and that instead the evolved Western health systems would bear the brunt ? Instead the opposite happened and few noticed. To tell the redemption of Africa, precisely in the days of the great global debate on Black Lives Matter, is the Guardian, through an article by columnist Afua Hirsch, a Norwegian of African origin and naturalized British: “There have also been mistakes and deaths in Africa – begins the former lawyer – but it has also happened that many nations, soon realizing that the tests and the expensive large-scale hospitalizations were not a viable option, they had no choice but to take a more creative approach”.
And in some countries, this approach has paid off. Even starting from herbal remedies. It happened in Madagascar where Artemisia annua, or sweet wormwood (a plant in the daisy family) is attracting a lot of attention after the president of the island in the Indian Ocean, Andry Rajoelina, said it is a "cure" for Covid-19. "Said like this it sounds 'Trumpian' – acknowledged Hirsch on the Guardian -, and in fact the WHO has warned that further studies are needed before sweet absinthe can be considered as a treatment for the disease". However, the hypothesis is not so far-fetched and the western scientific world has taken it seriously into consideration, to the point that a German institute is conducting research on a plant related to the African one and cultivated in Kentucky.
"The first results, after the tests on cells, are very interesting", admitted Professor Peter Seeberger, announcing that sweet absinthe will soon also be tested on men. Meanwhile, however, beyond these suggestions, some African countries have already tackled the emergency concretely and effectively. The Guardian cites two model cases, Senegal and Ghana: "Unlike the United Kingdom, where the dead are over 35.000, in each of these two countries there are about thirty deaths, out of a population of 16 million in the case of Senegal and even 30 million in Ghana". Dakar contained the contagion by intervening promptly in January, after the very first signs: while Italy and Europe arrived in March, the lockdown started immediately there. Thus, thanks to various contact tracing initiatives, a hospital bed was guaranteed for everyone.
Even more interesting is the case of Ghana, where in addition to contact tracing they have been experimented innovative techniques such as “pool testing”: blood samples from several individuals are pooled and tested together in a single tube using sensitive molecular biological detection methods; only if the result of the pool is positive, the samples are then tested individually. On this too, as well as on the possible validity of sweet absinthe, Africa could lead the way: the advantages of pool testing are in fact being studied by the World Health Organization. No, there wasn't a massacre in Africa. And perhaps the dark continent also has something to teach us.
