Why Chloroquine Was ban And Now A Game Changer In Covid-19

Chloroquine and Covid-19

Ever since covid-19 was discovered, the race for a cure or vaccine began. Unfortunately, it takes years for a new drug or vaccine to be researched and developed. All eyes turn to already existing drugs.

Chloroquine For Covid-19

Some years ago when another virus was discovered, the world scientist did research on a possible treatment from existing drugs. Some of the drugs did show effect on the virus in the laboratory. However, before further studies the disease went to way it came without a drug or vaccine.
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As the recent covid-19 started to have a devastating effect on the world, those scientists picked up from their old research as the covid-19 virus is similar to the other virus that caused the previous disease. They followed up on many of those drugs that had some level of effect on the other virus. One of the drugs that showed some level of effect on covid-19 is chloroquine in the laboratory.

Chloroquine Ban In Nigeria

Chloroquine is an antimalarial agent that was discovered in the 1940s. It is also use in the treatment of rheumatism. It was effective. However, many children today do not know anything about chloroquine. That is because many countries where malaria is endemic have banned chloroquine. The reason is because many malaria parasites have developed resistance to it. According to the world health organization (WHO), a country should change its line of antimalarials if the level of resistance is above 10 percent. And in 2005, the level of resistance of chloroquine to malaria parasites was about 25.8 percent (WHO, 2005) and 39.2 percent (Ukwuma, 2005). That same year, the federal government placed a ban on chloroquine for treating malaria. It was not until 2010 that the ban was effected.

The federal government shifts attention from chloroquine to artemisinin derivative that was introduced in the early 2000. However, with reports of resistance to some artemisinin derivatives in some countries, the WHO shifted from monotherapy to artemisinin combination therapy (ACT). Nigeria adopted that and banned use of artemisinin monotherapy such as artesunate. The ACT is a combination of a fast acting artemisinin derivative and another group of long acting antimalarial acting synergistically.
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Artmether, artesunate and dihydroartemisinin are artemisinin derivatives while lumefantrine, amodiaquine, piperaquine, arterolane, etc are examples of combination therapy with artemisinin derivatives.

Currently, the ban on chloroquine is still on. It is not approved for the treatment of malaria. However, the ban has been lifted for the experimental treatment of covid-19 patients by medical doctors in isolation centers.

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