A Professor of Pharmaceutical Science, Mrs. Peace Chinedum Babalola, Wednesday advised the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) on how chloroquine can be used in the treatment of COVID-19.
Babalola who is the Vice-Chancellor of Chrisland University, Abeokuta, Ogun state, spoke to journalists at the premises of the institution, explaining that chloroquine, if used at the early stage will not only cure Coronavirus but also stop the virus from replicating itself.
The don attributed the failure of the clinic trials of chloroquine in some quarters to the dosages and the stage at which it is applied in the treatment of COVID-19.
She blamed the controversies surrounding clinical trials of Chloroquine for coronavirus treatment on politics among the key players in the world health sector.
The VC who won the African Union’s (AU) Kwame Nkrumah Award for Scientific Excellence at the 33rd AU Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, maintained that the western world uses Chloroquine for treatment of COVID-19 more than African countries.
According to her, most of the trials have failed because almost 90 percent of the application is done at the severe stage, when the virus would have eaten deeper into the patients’ body.
She said, “Chloroquine is actually being used to treat what we called auto-immune diseases. Chloroquine is used by the western world today more than Africa to treat auto-immune disease. Coronavirus is an auto-immune disease that triggers something and your immunity begins to fight it. Study has shown that chloroquine will only work at starting stage. There are many stages of the virus around five. Chloroquine has a long life line; it helps you not to allow the virus to key into the body and when the virus is already there, it helps in prevent replication.
“Why do we have conflicting results? Almost 90 per cent of the people that are saying chloroquine did not work are using chloroquine at that severe level when it is not very effective; it is already too late by the time you are using ventilators and all that, because the body is looking for oxygen.
“The other thing is that they said why chloroquine is toxic. This is because the dosages they are using are also at toxic levels. They are higher than doses we are proposing. So, some of those doses are high and we are proposing that the doses should be reduced. They should be higher than what we used for malaria because within three to four days, the parasite is gone, but for coronavirus, it engages so many organs, you can use it for longer period of five days and beyond.”
The Pharmacist, however, called for proper and randomised clinical trial of Chloroquine for the treatment of coronavirus.
She equally called for collaboration between Orthodox and herbal medicine on the research and development of cure for the virus.
The VC who acknowledged the potentials of herbal medicine, disclosed Nigeria has no fewer than 8,000 documented medicinal plants.
