Coronavirus: NAFDAC Approves Chloroquine Production For Clinical Trial

The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has approved Chloroquine production for a clinical trial to tackle the coronavirus.

Mojisola Adeyeye, the Director-General of NAFDAC made the announcement on Friday at the NAFDAC headquarters, while stating that the use of Chloroquine is for clinical trials only in a bid to find treatment for the coronavirus.

She, however, stated that Choloquine has not been approved by NAFDAC for the treatment of the coronavirus.

According to the DG, NAFDAC:

“In the case of Chloroquine, it has been demonstrated in the literature and with clinical research which is still ongoing, that Chloroquine is superior to the Placebo.

“NAFDAC is not approving Chloroquine as a product that has can be used for coronavirus because there is no submission to us for registration but because it is under clinical trials, NAFDAC approves medicines meant for clinical trials.

“Therefore the medicine is being approved just for the clinical trials,”

She, therefore, called on experts and researchers that are interested in doing a clinical trial on Chloroquine to approach approved outlets, adding that a drug company has been given an approval to produce chloroquine in batches.

“Right now, we have asked one company to make a batch of Chloroquine for the purpose of the clinical trial,” Adeyeye added.

Nigerians have also been urged by the NAFDAC DG to stop the use of chloroquine as an anti-malaria drug.

She stated that:  “Nobody should use chloroquine as anti-malaria because of the resistance that has been proven to develop in the past after the use of chloroquine in the population.”