By A Correspondent- A lot of Africans on social media have expressed their anger on a viral video suggesting that Africa should be the first place where coronavirus treatments are tested.

Jean-Paul Mira, head of intensive care at Cochin hospital in Paris, and Camille Locht, head of research at the Inserm health research group, both said on French TV that there was a case for testing out the vaccines in African countries.

“If I can be provocative, shouldn’t we be doing this study in Africa, where there are no masks, no treatments, no resuscitation?” Dr Mira said on TV channel LCI.

“A bit like as it is done elsewhere for some studies on Aids. In prostitutes, we try things because we know that they are highly exposed and that they do not protect themselves.”

“You are right,” Dr Locht responded.

“We are in the process of thinking about a study in parallel in Africa.”

The comments received an angry response on social media, including from former footballers Didier Drogba and Samuel Eto’o.

“I would like to vividly denounce those demeaning, false and most of all deeply racist words,” Drogba tweeted.

“Do not take African people as human guinea pigs! It’s absolutely disgusting,” he added.

Another twitter user said “It’s 2020 in France & we still see people from Africa as subjects for experimentation. This is what normalized racism looks like.AFAIK, nobody jumped in to counter the arguments, both doctors agreed. Same, the way s.e.x-workers are considered: like objects that can be used for tests.”

“If only Africa would choose better leaders, we would not even need to worry about this happening,” another responded.-Online