No one prays to be sick or get infected with deadly and life-threatening diseases such as malaria, typhoid, meningitis and so on. However, it would seem that for some university students in the United Kingdom, the reverse is the case. These scholars want to be sick, in fact, they go all the way just to be self-inflicted with these illnesses.
These university students are the stranded ones who can barely make ends meet during their years of study. In order to survive, they have become participants of series of researches carried out at research institutes in pristine UK colleges such as Oxford and Imperial College London.
For a sum of 2500 to 3500 pounds (an equivalent of N1.1m to N1.6m), these students subject themselves to being infected with dangerous tropical diseases such as typhoid, malaria and pneumonia.
According to reports gathered by Legit.ng, there are a lot of volunteers out there who are healthy and fine but who go through the hassle of inflicting themselves with diseases that are infectious and dangerous just to get paid.
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This practice is without doubt influenced by the fact that the United Kingdom is a leading force when it comes to the study of infectious diseases and certain experiments which are known as “challenge trials” usually involve the challenging of guinea pigs and humans (mostly students) by inflicting them with infectious diseases.
For a while, this trend has been adopted and it has become a popular way to progress the development of new vaccines at a lesser cost than what it would take them to go out into the fields and look for people who are really infected.
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According to experts, with the risk of a global pandemic growing, this method ensures for a proper understanding of infectious illnesses and gives an hindsight into ways to combat them.
The Telegraph interviewed one of the healthy volunteers who had willingly allowed himself to be infected with typhoid two times to get the juicy amount of 6000 pounds (N3.2m).
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The 27-year-old zoology student of Oxford University named Matthew Speight said he had to subscribe to this way of making money because things were hard for him. His exact words were these: “I am a PhD student, the income I get is significantly below the minimum wage, so the financial incentive is strong. The trials pay quite well and Oxford is very expensive. I used the money for my rent.”
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Despite the pain and suffering that might have come with his previous challenges, Matthew has indicated that he is willing to undergo yet another challenge which might make him contract malaria eventually.
Recently, a woman nearly died after denying her HIV status for months. After acknowledging that she was indeed positive, she decided to become an advocate for HIV/AIDS.
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Source: Legit.ng