The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), has approved anti-malaria drug, chloroquine, for clinical trials in Nigeria.
The Director General of the agency, Mojisola Adeyeye, made the announcement on Friday, March 20, 2020.
According to her, NAFDAC was not approving Chloroquine for the treatment of Coronavirus but for clinical trials to find treatment for the virus.
“NAFDAC is not approving Chloroquine as a product that 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,” Adeyeye said.
Furthermore, she called on experts and researchers that were interested in doing a clinical trial on Chloroquine to approach approved outlets.
“Right now, we have asked one company to make a batch of Chloroquine for the purpose of the clinical trial.”
This is coming barely 24 hours after President Donald Trump approved Chloroquine for treatment of the coronavirus disease in the United States.
President Trump said chloroquine is effective in the treatment of coronavirus because it had shown ‘tremendous promise’ in treating Covid-19, which has infected more than 10,000 Americans and killed at least 176.
Meanwhile, Nigeria currently have 12 confirmed cases of the dreaded coronavirus. Eleven in Lagos and one in Ekiti.
