Chief Executive Officer of the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), Delese Mimi Darko has disclosed that clinical trials for some natural products for the treatment of COVID-19 in Ghana have begun.
According to her, some local companies and researchers in academia have approached the Authority with the said products and once there is evidence that these products are potent, the Authority will grant approval.
Speaking on Citi TV, Mrs Darko said the FDA will only recommend the use of local or herbal medicines if there’s evidence of their efficacy after they are taken through the various clinical stages.
Last month, President of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina officially launched the COVID Organics (CVO), a herbal mixture, claiming that it can prevent and cure patients suffering from the novel coronavirus.
South Africa has already expressed its willingness to assist Madagascar to undertake scientific analysis on the drug to provide scientific evidence of its ability to cure patients.
Reacting to the development in Madagascar and whether Ghana will recommend the drug to be used, Mrs. Darko said there is currently no empirical evidence to back claims that the drug can work.
“We’ve heard about it, it’s called COVID organics, and I know it contains Diatomaceae plants, which is the same thing we have in some of the anti-malaria drugs, like artesunate and another essential oil so yes we’ve read about it. What we also look out for is evidence so you cannot just put a herbal product on the market without evidence and say it treats disease and yes we’ve looked at whether there is any evidence and so far as we’ve seen, it was tested in about 20 people in over 3 weeks and they came out with the claim of cure. There are no published studies and what we will say is that we will need more evidence.”
“I think they didn’t say all the 20 people all recovered, I think they said about 3 or so, unfortunately, we can only read online and sometimes published papers because they have a scientific community. So far as we can see, we do not see the evidence and as a responsible regulatory authority it will not be the best thing to do to allow a product that does not have much evidence to be tried or used on the public.”
“Definitely, if we have to, yes we would. We don’t do the analysis, the analysis is done by researchers so some studies will have to go on, the only thing we can do is some quality analysis but that is not efficacy and that is not safe so the only analysis that can be done is it is given to people and then it is studied, I don’t know how far they’ve gone, whether they did any other study or first introduced it to people so yes we will be willing to study,” she said.
The FDA CEO said Ghana is currently considering all options which include the testing of some local remedies for COVID-19 treatment.
“There are some companies and some academia researchers who are also looking at some natural products for COVID. Some have approached us, we’ve looked at it and they’re going to go into some clinical trials so at the end of the day there is the evidence that is needed. You cannot take a drug and say that it works, we need some amount of evidence.”
“But I think our local people have also started, I know there are some pockets of trials that have started, some from the KNUST and a couple of other people are looking at some local products so we are looking at all the options and once there is evidence we will approve of them to be used,” she added.
Source: abcnewsgh
