He was among the first set of students to receive secondary education in the newly-created St Joseph’s College, Sasse in 1939, the first such institution in the British-administered territory of Cameroon and, in fact, the entire territory of Cameroon, French-speaking inclusive. Professor Anomah Ngu died quietly, the same way one can qualify his quiet an unnoticeable ascent up the academic ladder, started when he was admitted into the University College in Ibadan, Nigeria in 1948. Graduating as a surgeon from the University of London in 1954, he occupied prestigious positions in the Nigerian medical hierarchy from the late 1950s and up to the late 1970s when he was called back to Cameroon to be among the first team of trainers of the nascent school of medicine which owes much of its repute to the immeasurable contribution of this indefatigable surgeon-turned-trainer of medical doctors.
Professor Anomah Ngu was head of the Nigerian medical corps in 1967; but hardly attracted by the plus points of such a high office, he opted to return home to native Cameroon to take the underling position of Professor and Head of Surgery at the University Centre for Health Sciences of the University of Yaounde under his confrere and no-less meriting Professor Gottlieb Monekosso in 1971. A year later, and in compensation for his research efforts, he received one of medicines highest awards in the area of cancer research, the Lasker Medical Award Prize. In 1974, he was appointed Vice Chancellor of the University of Yaounde and quit the position in 1982 to become the Director General of Scientific and Technological Research. He was Minister of Public Health between 1984 and 1988 and is fondly remembered as one who would not get to his cabinet in the Ministry of Public Health without making his rounds in the Yaounde Central hospital where he continued to head the surgery unit, even as minister.
Even out of government, Professor Anomah Ngu continued to be very proactive on health issues. In 1991, he opened the Hope Clinic in the Essos neighbourhood of Yaounde with a special focus on HIV, sickle cell anaemia and cancer. His discovery of a vaccine, VANHIVAX, to attenuate the effects of HIV, brought him eyeball-to-eyeball with many of his scientific colleagues who continued to question the effectiveness of his vaccine. But even on his death bed, Professor Anomah Ngu would not renege on the effectiveness of his vaccine. Who knows? This may be the greatest heritage he is leaving to humanity. Time will certainly tell who was right.
At the time of going to press yesterday evening, there was yet nothing to write home about as per burial arrangements. But what is certain is that governmental agencies are at work to give the medical icon a deserved burial, just as members of the Sasse Old Boys Association, SOBA within which he spent most of his extra-professional life, are also working on plans to give one of their surviving patriarchs, befitting obsequies.
