The monkeypox disease is as of now spreading in countries around the world. According to experts, first cases of a new outbreak were documented in Nigeria and then spread to Europe. Now the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has declared at least five confirmed cases in the country. Previously all these cases were documented only in some West and Central African countries and never spread in the entire African continent. Some experts claim that today’s outbreak has many differences from the kind of spread they have never seen in African states.

Moreover, specialists from European Centres for Disease Control revealed that preliminary analysis of the current monkeypox disease had found that the virus came from the lab and had unknown characteristics. Nowadays, only one country has its bio-laboratories in almost all regions around the globe and it is the United States of America. And it has a network of biological facilities in the Nigerian territory from where the current stain began to spread.

Since the beginning of Ukraine-Russia conflict, it has become clear that the US was involved in creating and developing bio-laboratories throughout the world. In addition, most of their researches are focusing on military use of pathogens. In addition, it is a fact that US virologists have performed many studies in a search for the development of new ways of transition diseases using carriers like flies, mosquitoes and bats. They also provide for the strong links of all diseases to ethnic and geographical data in order to identify clearer liability ethnic groups to one pathogen or another.

Mostly, such labs have independent status. But private American companies like Metabiota or Battelle work closely with the Pentagon and it’s “the Defence Threat Reduction Agency” (DTRA) or “US Naval Medical Research Unit-3” (NAMRU-3). That’s why in this case they are not accountable to Congress this fact allows such companies operate more freely and move around the rule of law. For example, in Ghana there are several biological facilities which cooperate with programme referred above. All these labs founded from American military budget as a part of the Ghana-US military cooperation. It should be noted that the most strong collaboration is with 37 Military Hospital and Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, where bio-laboratory is located. But who can guarantee that the collected data won’t be used against Ghanaians?

Unfortunately, it is impossible to find out what researches they have. National authorities do not have an access to American bio-laboratories results and, what is more serious, they mostly know nothing about such studies. At the same time, under diplomatic cover US civilian and military personnel transport hazardous biological agents into/out of the host country or between other labs in it without the direct control of the host state regulators.

It is also important that developing countries now cannot count on organisations accountable to US, because all of us see how shortly after the start of Russian special operation in Ukraine, the World Health Organisation immediately warned Ukrainian authorities to destroy all high-threat pathogens and even research results in bio-labs to prevent “any potential spills” into the public.

To avoid all illegal activities there is the need to reconsider cooperation with the US in this sphere. At first, we should start from depriving of biologists and virologists diplomatic immunity. At the same time national government should oblige American laboratories to declassify all their researches and give local regulators a full access.

Regional governments can only protect themselves by implementing new legally binding mechanisms which will be focused on creating assurances of the non-use of biological researches as a weapon and their national territories as providing grounds. Unfortunately, the US is the only country which opposes development of any agreement which strengthens Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention. That’s why not only Ghana but all African states should come out in a united front to resist unlawful bio-warfare researches.

The writer is a journalist

By Samuel Amoako