A French doctor is quoted as saying that US billionaire Bill Gates wants to sell a COVID-19 vaccine in Africa, but it’s poisonous and will “destroy” Africa.
A message circulating on social media in Nigeria claims that US billionaire Bill Gates wants to “sell” a Covid-19 vaccine in Africa – to destroy the continent., One version, a screenshot posted on Facebook on 31 March 2020, shows Didier Raoult, the French doctor who promoted chloroquine as a cure for coronavirus. It says the doctor has called on Africans “not to take Bill Gates vaccine”. (Disclosure: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of Africa Check’s funders, providing 18% of our income in 2018.), It then attributes this quote to Raoult: “I call on Africans not to take the vaccine that will soon be sold against coronavirus. This vaccine contains poison and the West want to destroy Africa on the pretext that it is the coronavirus that destroyed the Africa. Why don’t they start their vaccine in Italy, Spain and France, where there are a lot of cases? I call on African leaders to caution. The only vaccine and antidote to fight coronavirus is chloroquine. I want this message share to all of Africa.”, Suspicion about a coronavirus vaccine has seemingly been fuelled by two French doctors, Jean-Paul Mira and Camille Lochte, saying on live TV that Covid-19 vaccine trials should be done in Africa, “where there are no masks, no treatments, no resuscitation”., Is Gates really about to send a coronavirus vaccine to Africa?, A search Raoult on Facebook yielded a few accounts and pages with his name and photo. Some of the accounts have no post. One had a few posts made on 25 March 2020. Other pages were only created in late March., None of them had the quote about Gates’s coronavirus vaccine for Africa. It was also not found in Raoult’s Twitter timeline., An organisation he leads, IHU Méditerranée Infection, a research centre in Marseille, France, told AFP that Raoult did not make such a statement., In an article on the Covid-19 pandemic published on 28 February 2020, Gates said the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations had prepared up to eight promising vaccine candidates for clinical trials., “If one or more of these vaccines proves safe and effective in animal models, they could be ready for larger-scale trials as early as June,” he said., CEO of the Gates Foundation, Mark Suzman, told CNN that efforts are being made to develop a coronavirus vaccine as quickly as possible. But it will still take at least 18 months., There is no evidence that the coronavirus vaccine currently being developed with support from the Gates Foundation and other partners will be tested in Africa., The claim has also been debunked by the World Health Organization. On 6 April WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, condemned the comments by Mira and Locht., “Africa can’t and won’t be a testing ground for any vaccine,” Ghebreyesus said. – Allwell Okpi, , "A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”. What should you do? First, dont delete!", Click on our guide for the steps you should follow., Publishers guide, Africa Check is a partner in Facebook’s third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media., The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it., You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how., Africa Check is working with the CoronaVirusFacts/DatosCoronaVirus Alliance, a coalition of more than 100 fact-checkers fighting misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic., Learn more about the alliance here., , © Copyright Africa Check 2020. Read our republishing guidelines.\xa0You may reproduce this piece or content from it for the purpose of reporting and/or discussing news and current events. This is subject to: Crediting Africa Check in the byline, keeping all hyperlinks to the sources used and adding this sentence at the end of your publication: “This report was written by Africa Check, a non-partisan fact-checking organisation. View the original piece on their website", with a link back to this page., We depend on voluntary donations to run this site. Please help us to keep public figures accountable by supporting the project., Find out more, For democracy to function, public figures need to be held to account for what they say. The claims they make need to be checked, openly and impartially. Africa Check is an independent, non-partisan organisation which assesses claims made in the public arena using journalistic skills and evidence drawn from the latest online tools, readers, public sources and experts, sorting fact from fiction and publishing the results., , Get a weekly dose of facts, straight to your inbox.
Bill Gates not testing Covid-19 vaccine in Africa | Africa Check