The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control says it has received about four indigenous formulation application for the treatment of COVID-19 from researchers in the country.
Speaking on a live telecast, Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, said following invitation for application by the agency, four local researchers had submitted their remedy for evaluation.
“As at now, we have three to four applications and I have given a directive for expedited action for the samples to get to the lab soonest,” she said.
The pharmacist stated her commitment to ensuring that every formulation is made to undergo a trial.
“We don’t want to have a product that people will take and start vomiting.
“We need to also be sure the environment it was produced was not contaminated or exposed,” she stated.
According to her, part of the criteria for acceptance and evaluation of every COVID-19 application entails that the plants deployed for use in the remedy is identified.
“If somebody has a remedy for COVID-19, he must also be made to answer some questions”.
“We need to know the family that the plant(s) used belong to,” she noted.
On May 13, Adeyeye had announced that only one application had been received from an indigenous company seeking the endorsement of a product meant to treat the symptoms of COVID-19, rather than the virus itself.
Adeyeye observed that in a bid to discover a cure, the Nigerian public had been inundated with a number of claims from different quarters comprising complementary and alternative medicines practitioners, traditional healers, and academia.
While admitting that Africa is blessed with varieties of potent herbs, Adeyeye warned that any claim of cure must be subjected to clinical evaluation through well-controlled, randomised clinical trials following an approved clinical trial protocol.
“It is pertinent to note, however, that these claims are domiciled in either the conventional news media or social media,” she revealed.
Although the World Health Organisation says there is no vaccine yet for coronavirus, it says investigations are ongoing to ascertain the potency of some herbal remedies, including Madagascar’s COVID-Organics.
Recall that President Bihari recieved the Madagascar Mixture said to have been administered on COVID-19 patients on the Indian ocean island. Only one death has been reported in Madagascar.
(C) Control TV 2020.
