NAFDAC to continue hydroxychloroquine clinical trial despite WHO suspension

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”