The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and
Control, NAFDAC, will continue with the clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine
despite the World Health Organization, WHO, suspending it
This was disclosed by NAFDAC Director-General, Mojisola
Adeyeye, who revealed that such will be concluded within 4 months.
“I do not know the
data that they are looking at, whether it is from the Caucasian population or
from the African population. I know that the clinical trial treatment is about
to start or have started a few days ago in Lagos.
“When you do clinical trial treatment, there are many
factors that can affect the clinical outcome. The way drug is handled even from
children from the same mother may be different, not to talk of populations.
“So if the data they are looking at and the reason for
suspending the trials is because it is from a Caucasian population, then it may
be justified. I don’t think we have data from the African population yet
because our genetic makeup is different.
“You can take for example drugs used for Hypertension. There
are some drugs that would work for the African American or African population
that will not work for the Caucasian population.
“When you are doing Science experiment or clinical trial,
you wait for data. Once we start getting our own data in Africa, then we can go
one way or the other”, she said.
When asked if Nigeria will continue the clinical trial of
hydroxychloroquine, Mojisola Adeyeye replied in the affirmative.
Speaking on whether the drug is working on COVID-19 patients
in Nigeria, the NAFDAC DG said:
“There are three stages of COVID19. Because it is a new
virus, as we speak, things are evolving meaning new information is coming out
almost everyday.
“Now we know there are three stages of the disease, the
early stage; the mild stage and the severe stage. Very likely that Chloroquine
and Hydroxychloroquine will work at the initial and partly mild stages.
“So it depends on the severity of the disease when it was
given to the group of patients. If it is the severe case, the body is
overwhelmed by what is called the pro-inflammatory proteins. These are proteins
that will show up when something drastic is happening to a humanbeing. At that
point Chloroquine may not work. I don’t have data to prove that but there is
data to prove that Chloroquine worked for many patients that have COVID19. It
is based on research. It is now whether those patients actually were at the
early to mild stage”
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