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Keep
It Up Aminu Magashi: A Response to Adalat Yusuf Ahmed
Awaisu A., M.Pharm. Dear
Adalat, I
am happy to inform you that I follow the persistent polio imbroglio in I
would like to begin by a reminder that, public health is a societal
effort to protect, promote, and restore the health of the public. It is
a combination of sciences, skills, and beliefs that are directed to the
maintenance and improvement of the health of the people through
collective and social actions. Having this at the back of my mind and
other ideas, I must admit that poliomyelitis is a
vaccine-preventable disease of childhood, alike with measles,
meningitis, tetanus, mumps, whooping cough, and diphtheria. A new cohort
of children is born every year, and obviously, all will require
immunization, especially before entry into the school system. I am an
ardent believer that such life-threatening diseases of childhood should
be eradicated. I don’t want to talk about malaria because vaccines
against it are still under scientific investigations and perhaps
clinical trials are still on. Yet, I sometimes question myself how much
effort is focused towards its treatment and prevention as a notable
contributor of infant morbidity and mortality in I
thought you deserve some benefits of doubt, but I guess you do not.
Magashi! A health columnist that others and I cherish writes with
professional competence and has written on diverse health-related
issues. I applaud him for being consistently consistent and frown at you
for being consistently inconsistent. I have neither reservation nor
hesitation to inform you that he has won the respect of not only his
peers, but also many people. His readers are really impressed with the
quality and consistency of his contributions to the pressing health
issues. In fact, Magashi is an astute health columnist of the present
days. Please keep it up and maintain the reputation for high quality
public health contributions. I
wish to recall back your column of February and inquire you of ‘what
would you have been without the taxpayers’ money’. This is in
response to a statement you made thereof, in which you were questioning
him as to ‘what would he have been without taxpayers’ money’. In
the same article you advised him to go back to the hospital to take care
of malnourished women and children. Before I go into any professional
argument with you and ask you about epidemiology of diseases in Not
only that, Adalat spearheads an effort to castigate, blackmail, and
blemish the characters and personalities of other distinguished people.
In the Tuesday issue (June 8, 2004) of Daily Trust under the
Health-Interactive Column, Magashi has attempted to clear the
misconceptions of many readers regarding some professional disciplines
and their roles, especially in scientific and clinical investigations
such as the ones involved in polio vaccines. In the article titled
‘Rivalry among Health Professionals: The Polio Experience’, he
highlights without prejudice or disregard to any health professional or
party thereof, the various academic backgrounds, expertise and
professional responsibilities of various stakeholders who felt that they
were the alpha and omega of leading a research team in the above
mentioned controversy. He further explained though in brief terms,
giving some literal hints on the general role of each of them. Though,
Magashi’s article was neither exhaustive nor exclusive, readers are
impressed with the manner in which he presented it. I strongly believe
that a research on the safety and efficacy of polio vaccine is a
multi-disciplinary one, in which professionals in different
specializations of pharmacy, medicine, statistics, or microbiology have
a role to play. In response to this, Adalat discredits, disregards, and
undermines respected professionals, academicians, and intellectuals like
Prof. Abdullahi Mustapha, Dr. Haruna A. Kaita, Dr. Alhassan Bichi, and
Dr. Ibramim Adamu Yakasai (wrongly cited Ibrahim Ahmed Yakasai). The
faculty of reasoning of these individuals is far beyond yours and their
contribution to humanity (I may not need to tell my readers). That is
why they do not write garbage in the national dailies. No one seems to
benefit from the contents of your articles, but many stand to benefit
always from prolific writers like Magashi. To clear one misconception
from your mind, no reader would be interested to know specifically who
the professionals you were referring to were. In that you termed them
‘faceless characters’; whereas his aim was not to tarnish
anybody’s image, but rather enlighten people who are not familiar with
the concepts. The objective of Adalat’s rejoinder was not and would
never be beneficial in anyway to anybody. I would have preferred
anonymity, but I feel that people like you do not deserve that. Further,
I would like to inform you that Haruna Kaita is a scientist and a
researcher with international reputation and recognition. Please find
out! It is unethical for you to therefore make such assertions on his
character. His contributions to both the pharmaceutical and biomedical
sciences are well respected and appreciated by all. To
my surprise Adalat has condemned most of the people in Magashi’s
article without any basis or considerations. This is an eloquent
testimony of your uncompromising ideas, bigotry, and narrow-mindness. I
strongly advise you that you stop writing garbage in the media and
concentrate on your career. Lest
I forget! You keep on claiming that you are ‘an expert on polio’. By
virtue of what academic qualification are you a polio expert? I stand to
be corrected that you are neither scientific nor objective in most of
your arguments and write-ups. People cannot see the expertise in you and
there is reasonable doubt as to the validity of such charlatan claims. Hence,
in your ‘X-ray analysis’ there are two possibilities. Either you got
a false-positive result or you were misinterpreting the findings!!!
Writers like you should be banned from public write-ups if possible,
because you have knowledge deficit of the ethics of media writing and
etiquette education. Actors and actresses of your sort end up as
failures. Finally,
I would like to conclude by saying that the impact Aminu Magashi has
been making through vital health columns is remarkable. He provides
information that will be of direct value to community health and
patients’ care. Ahmed
Awaisu
Writes in from the Dept. of Clinical Pharmacy, |