Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire has come out to say that President Muhammadu Buhari is not against the idea of using local herbs to combat coronavirus in Nigeria.
He, however, revealed that the Nigeria Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development must first certify any of the herbs before it can be made available to Nigerian patients.
According to him, it is very wrong for hospitals to turn back patients as a result of fear of COVID-19 because that will not help anyone.
The Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, Dr. Chikwe Ihekwazu then added that history will judge NCDC on if they failed the country or not but now is not the time to trade blames.
His words, “Before now, it was said that Chloroquine can destroy the virus. But test are still going on in that regard. We have to test the efficacy of local drugs to see if it can kill or virus and also to find out that is in the process of killing the virus, it can affect the body. So, the Institute will carry out the required test on the local drugs find out how it”.
The Director-General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, Dr. Chikwe Ihekwazu had this to say on if NCDC has failed, “History will judge us. This is not the time to trade blames. The NCDC has a staff strength of 300 and we have been working with other agencies of government and the states to do what we have been able to do so far.
“This pandemic will not end next week and I know that I will be criticised for this. But we need to work together to achieve results. Neither treatment or testing can get us out of this. We need your voices to get Nigerians to understand what is going on.”
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