As US president Donald Trump on a wild run openly promoting widespread use of anti-malarial drugs, Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine, to combat COVID-19 without any scientific evidence and against the advice of top researchers at Center for Disease Control (CDC) and National Institute of Health (NIH), Indian government has gone a step further as Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has recommended to use Chloroquine/Hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic measure by all healthcare workers to prevent COVID-19. Although Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine are long known and used for their anti-malarial effects, these drugs are not without potentially serious side-effects on the hepatic, nervous, renal and cardiac systems including prolongation of the QT wave and cardiac arrhythmia. On the face of Trump’s baseless claim for using Chloroquine/Hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 patients, American Medical Association (AMA) president and other prominent doctors in USA have issued a stark warning that indiscriminate use of these drugs may even be responsible for needless death of patients (see attached).
Going a step further than using Chloroquine or Hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19 patients that has little or no scientific evidence, ICMR has recently recommended that all healthcare workers should be treated with these potentially toxic anti-malaria drugs as a measure to protect against the coronavirus. We are not aware about any published scientific study in support of prophylactic use of Chloroquine/Hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19 even though the potential danger of these drugs including possible death is well-known to medical science for a long time. In order to stop promotion of unscientific and irrational use of toxic drugs in any medical condition, PBT has sent a memorandum to the IMCR director requesting to reconsider and change their advice for wide-scale prophylactic use of Chloroquine/Hydroxychloroquine for all health workers in India (see below).
NEWS- AMA president on Chloroquine and COVID-19
Comments on this entry are closed.
….because Corona makes dis balance to all. Now only social distancing and home quarantine along with self meditation, patience, tolerance and research to invent vaccine and medicine can solve this problem. Otherwise god knows what happen tomorrow and the next days. I think, only to much greedy, selfish and mostly corrupted peoples are responsible for this situation. May god bless all the good and honest people. Thanks.
Right.