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0 He may have been ridiculed in the West for rejecting lockdowns and encouraging prayer-a-thons. But as ex-World Health Organization scientist Dr David Bell explains, Tanzania’s late president John Magufuli is not seen as a pariah by many in the scientific community – he’s seen as a life-saver.
If you read the BBC website, you probably think Tanzania’s late president was either a rebel, a ‘Covid denier’ or just plain stupid.
President Magufuli was actually a highly educated scientist with a PhD in chemistry, who probably saved thousands of lives by refusing to embrace lockdowns and other knee-jerk reactions foisted on the people in much of Africa and the West.
Magufuli’s decision not to lock down was consistent with the evidence-based pandemic guidelines released by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2019.
He rightly predicted that Covid-19 mortality in Africa would be very low compared to other major killers like malaria, tuberculous (TB), and HIV-Aids, and followed good public health principles in prioritising these higher burden diseases that particularly afflict the young, while telling Tanzanians not to panic.
In reality, he was none of these. READ
