In search of a cure to the coronavirus pandemic, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has approved the production of Chloroquine.
The agency said it would love to subject the drug for clinical trials in tackling COVID-19.
This was made known by Director-General (DG) of NAFDAC, Mojisola Adeyeye on Friday at the agency’s headquarters in Lagos.
She however, noted that NAFDAC was not approving Chloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 but for clinical trials to find treatment for the virus.
She said “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 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.”
Consequently, she urged experts and researchers interested in conducting a clinical trial on Chloroquine to approach approved outlets
Adding that a drug company has been given an approval to produce chloroquine in batches she said:
“Right now, we have asked one company to make a batch of Chloroquine for the purpose of clinical trial.”
Meanwhile, she said Nigerians should not 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.”
The President of the United States, was quoted to have recently claimed that Chloroquine could cure the deadly coronavirus.