The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) says COVID-19
vaccines need to undergo clinical trial before being administered on Nigerians.
Speaking when he featured on Sunrise Daily, a programme on
Channels Television, Innocent Ujah, president of the association, said this
step needs to be taken to determine the efficacy and adaptability of the
vaccines.
He said he is not certain whether Africans were involved in
the development of the vaccines, hence the need for evaluation before
administration on Nigerians.
“The vaccines will come out, if it comes to Nigeria, we need
to quickly do our own evaluation,” he said.
“I’m not sure, I cannot say with 100 percent certain that in
the process of developing these vaccines and the clinical trial, whether an
African countries are involved.
“If not, then because of the biology, environment, because
of the genetics composition, we need to do our own clinical trial, very quickly
before it can be used on Nigeria.
“While we do not question the efficacy and safety, the
responses vary from place to place. Recall that when we were using chloroquine,
the southern part was not responding to chloroquine, some parts of the north
were. But in totality it was thought that chloroquine were no longer effective
and we changed.”
The NMA president argued that the COVID-19 vaccines were
developed under emergency and there is need to establish the response of
Nigerians.
Ujah said: “Everything that is happening now is emergency.
The vaccines that are being produced within nine months is emergency, otherwise
vaccines production does not take within six to nine months.
“It is a process from phase 1, phase 2, phase 4, of course
is the marketing, if you can say we can do this with emergency, when it is
imported, we should also do our own clinical trial.”
Meanwhile, Kenya has joined the global efforts in search of
an effective vaccine for COVID-19, with the start of a trial evaluating the
ChAdOx1 nCoV-2019 Oxford coronavirus vaccine.
Kenya joins a number of countries including the United
Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil who are running trials to evaluate the ChAdOx1
nCoV-19 vaccine, with over 20,000 volunteers now taking part in trials across
these countries.
According to a report on University of Oxford’s website, the
trial in Kenya will initially involve 40 frontline workers in Kilifi county.
Once the vaccine safety is confirmed, a further 360
volunteers will be recruited with possible expansion of the trial to Mombasa
County.
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Hope you will first test it before giving to others
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