The Fly Catchers Of Ilorin
In 1932, in the small town of Tuskegee, Alabama, the US Public Health Service began a study that would become one of the darkest chapters in the world’s medical history.
By offering them free meals, burial insurance and medical care, researchers were able to recruit 600 black men, 399 of who had syphilis and 201 of who did not. Many were low-income sharecroppers who had never been to a hospital and had complete faith in the physicians. However, they were not informed that this was an experiment to study untreated syphilis, not a treatment.
In the 1940s, penicillin was discovered and used to treat syphilis, yet, these poor black farmers were denied treatment. For 40 years, doctors lied to patients while they watched as the disease tore through their bodies, causing blindness, insanity and death.
Years later, in 1972, a whistleblower revealed the truth. The public was outraged, but by then, 128 men had died from syphilis or related complications, and many had infected their wives and children.
Of course, the aftermath of this ‘research’ shattered the trust between black communities and medical institutions. The only good news is that it led to new laws to protect research participants, ensuring informed consent and ethical oversight.
The Tuskegee study remains a painful lesson-a story of betrayal by science and a reminder of why justice and honesty must guide medicine.
Why this sad story in history? I was sitting on my own jejely, minding my business and basking in the success of our dear Super Falcons, D’tigress and secondary school students who won the TeenEagle competitions in London when a colleague from Ilorin called. He wanted my perspective on a case he had seen in a rural town.
At first, I thought he was joking. Fly catchers, in this day and age?
Apparently, decades later, the ghosts of Tuskegee still linger. And now, I fear that they hover over our rivers in Nigeria-disguised not as phlebotomists or lab technicians but as volunteers with fly tubes and sun-scorched limbs.
In a small village in Ilorin, Nigeria, a woman sits by the river, her ankles bare, her skin exposed to the humid air and the sharp bites of black flies. We will call her Madam Tosin. She is what scientists call a ‘human flycatcher.’ Her task? To sit motionless for hours as black flies land on her body, where she catches them one by one in tiny tubes, all in the name of science. The aim? To monitor the presence of Onchocerca volvulus, the parasite that causes river blindness.
Noble, yes; necessary, perhaps. But ethical? That is where things get complicated.
Volunteers like Janet receive a stipend of just about N10,000 per month (What the hell?). In return, they expose themselves to potentially infected flies, heat, snakes, mosquitoes, tsetse flies, and sometimes even ridicule. They are not protected by gloves, nets or insecticide. Their skin is the experiment.
How is this different from Tuskegee?
In both cases, impoverished black bodies are conscripted into scientific research with minimal protection and limited understanding of the risks. In both, the institutions behind the studies wield immense power, while the participants have little recourse. The primary difference is that this time, the disease is external rather than internal, the danger immediate rather than latent. But the power imbalance, the desperation, the invisibility-they remain eerily familiar.
Of course, the researchers will tell us that these volunteers give informed consent. That they are trained. That the risks are explained. But what does consent look like in a place where economic survival trumps personal safety? Can someone truly consent to being bitten by flies known to transmit a blinding disease for the price of N10,000 per month? 10k fa? Haba Jama’a! What manner of exploitation and wickedness is this?
Let me be clear: the elimination of onchocerciasis or river blindness is a public health imperative. It affects millions across sub-Saharan Africa, with Nigeria bearing the heaviest burden. The black fly, the parasite’s vector, is a persistent foe. Capturing and testing these flies is essential to determining whether transmission has ceased. The World Health Organisation requires about 6,000 flies to be caught and tested before certifying an area free of transmission. But the method-using human beings as bait-raises profound ethical questions.
You know the annoying part of all this? There are alternatives. Esperanza Window Traps (EWTs)-clever devices designed to mimic human scent and lure black flies to their doom-have shown promise. True, they have been less effective in Africa than in South America, but researchers are already tweaking the design: adding sticky paper, carbon dioxide, dark clothing and even simulated sweat to attract more flies. With proper investment and innovation, these traps could replace human bait entirely. Yet they remain underutilised.
Why? Because, simply put, human flycatchers are cheaper.
Cheaper than engineering a trap. Cheaper than mass-producing synthetic lures. Cheaper than treating the volunteers with dignity.
But ethics, like public health, should never be a matter of cost alone.
In a country already grappling with a health care system strained to its limits, the temptation to accept shortcuts is understandable. We are no strangers to sacrifice. But it is precisely in our moments of desperation that we must hold firm to principles that preserve our humanity. Exploiting the poor for the benefit of the many is not just unethical, it is unsustainable.
Today, it is black flies, tomorrow, it might be something else. And unless we draw clear boundaries now, the next generation of ‘volunteers’ will inherit the same risks, the same indignities and the same silent suffering.
Public health must never be about choosing who suffers for the greater good. It must be about protecting the most vulnerable among us, even, and especially when doing so is inconvenient or expensive.
We can, and must demand more from the institutions conducting these studies – they must provide better protective equipment, increase compensation and invest in non-human alternatives. Most importantly, they must ensure that ethical oversight is not just a formality but a living, breathing part of every project.
The eradication of river blindness is within reach, but let it not be written in history that we cured a disease by turning people into bait.
We have seen this play before; let us not perform it again.
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