Fighting an Impolite Virus

 

Review of An Imperfect Storm:n A Pandemic and the Coming of Age of a Nigerian Institution by Chikwe Ihekweazu with Vivianne Ihekweazu by Bolaji Olatunde

Publisher: Masobe Books and Logistics Limited

Date of Publication: 2024

In 2020, the world stood still, terrorised by a disrespectful virus named by COVID-19 by scientists. At no point does the narrative stand still in this riveting memoir by Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu and his wife, Vivianne Ihekweazu. In 2016, Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, was plucked from relative obscurity to become the head of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), “with the mandate to lead the preparedness, detection and response to infectious disease outbreaks and public health emergencies.” Prior to his appointment, he’d worked variously in Europe and South Africa for twenty years. 

The book’s narrative, rendered in an unflappable tone, settles the reader into a ringside seat of Nigeria’s war with a virus, through Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu’s eyes. The authors remark on COVID-19 being like many other viruses, “are little impolite things. They make no special consideration for holidays or other festivities.” The book opens with Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu being alerted to “’the pneumonia of unknown cause’ from Wuhan, China,” while holidaying during the 2019 Yuletide in his village, Amaigbo, southeastern Nigeria. “The new virus had effectively shut down a city the size of Lagos,” he reports. 

Chikwe Ihekweazu discusses his experiences as a medical student at the University of Nigeria, Enugu, from where he graduated in 1996. His “housemanship” in Aba also comes up, “where the nurses demanded competence, and the senior doctors weren’t only unapproachable but often completely unavailable.” His counterintuitive switch from surgery which had him spellbound as a student, to public health, which he’d earlier considered to be boring will fascinate the reader. His childhood on the grounds of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where “his (German) mother started out as a lecturer in the Department of Foreign Languages,” and his father, “was one of three doctors at the university hospital” will interest the reader. 

This insight into his background shifts seamlessly into the battle against COVID-19. Chikwe Ihekweazu admits to his initial intense apprehensions about Nigeria’s ability to survive the onslaught of the virus, after a trip to Wuhan in February 2020, in the immediate onset of the virus: “I wasn’t confident in our capacity for infectious disease management in other hospitals across the country.”

Chikwe Ihekweazu details how the Nigerian fight against the virus was made possible by cohorts of Nigerian professionals from every stratum of society, wielding and deploying their experience, expertise, guts, local and international networks, to ensure the prevention of the virus’s spread. The average Nigerian may be tempted to assume that the successful fight against COVID occurred by happenstance; the Ihekweazus’ book shows that it involved meticulous, on-the-job strategizing and implementation. He also details the transformation carried out by him and his team at the NCDC, which was created in 2007. Ihekweazu reports that under his leadership, that he and his team changed it from a little-known government parastatal which by 2016 had a hundred reportedly mostly demoralized staff to a well-oiled machine of about five hundred staff, which enabled the NCDC to become the public front in Nigeria’s fight against COVID-19. 

From the accounts in the book, the fight also took its personal tolls on the Ihekweazu family, and the staff of the NCDC. Upon Chikwe Ihekweazu’s return from Wuhan, he had to go into isolation in line with the COVID-19 protocols which were previously instituted by the NCDC. His son was “asked to stay at home to protect other students because his father had travelled to China,’ despite the said father having tested negative to COVID-19. To further complicate the times, Chikwe Ihekweazu had a well-kept secret health challenge that necessitated an invasive surgery — this, in the middle of the war on COVID-19. “Our staff were subjected to insults and death threats on social media.” Staff who were lost during the fight, both to natural and unnatural causes, are, commendably, honorably mentioned.  

At several points in the memoirs, Chikwe Ihekweazu bemoans the poor remuneration of staff of government agencies in Nigeria, and their disincentive to staff morale. It would have been an insightful addition in the book, if the Ihekweazus discussed how they coped economically with the reduced pay (“I took a pay cut, but it’s not really a matter of what the DG earns,” Chikwe Ihekweazu replied to a question from this writer during a book reading in Abuja in August 2024). This would have proved useful for Nigerian professionals in the diaspora who are willing to return home to contribute their quota to national development someday. 

The backroom shenanigans and power play behind the COVID-19 fight are some of the most spellbinding aspects of the book. The circumstances around the death attributed to COVID-19 of Abba Kyari, aka “case number 43,” the chief of staff of the then Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, are well explored. The vivid recollection of the frenzied reactions at The Presidency to the death of “case number 43” will set the pulse of the politically inclined racing. Unbeknownst to the general public, there was no love lost between Chikwe Ihekweazu and the then minister of health, Dr Osagie Ehanire, as well as several other officials in the top echelon of the Federal Ministry of Health, the NCDC’s supervising ministry. “In the end, I realized that an important relationship had been strained, and I don’t think I was ever forgiven for it,” he writes wistfully about the minister’s reaction to the management of information about Kyari’s illness. 

Chikwe Ihekweazu expresses perplexion at vaccine hesitancy, especially among health workers. “If the very people who had seen the devastation of COVID-19 up close were unsure about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines, how could we convince the rest of the population?” he wonders. “Every day unearthed a new conspiracy about the vaccines, even among those who should have known better,” he writes. No mention or allusion is made to the not unfounded reports of people vaccinated against COVID-19 and yet becoming victims of the same virus they were inoculated against, most notably President Joe Biden of the United States of America. The failed promise by the vaccine manufacturers that the vaccines would prevent the transmission of the virus is not mentioned either. His regrets about Nigeria’s response to the virus are freely discussed.  

Intended by the authors or not, An Imperfect Storm: A Pandemic and the Coming of Age of a Nigerian Institution is one of Nigeria’s most important public health and national health security documents of today.   

 

Rating: 4 stars out 0f 5