Ololade Adeyanju/
Chief Press Secretary to the Lagos State governor, Gboyega Akosile, has raised the alarm over the rate hospitals in the state have been receiving patients suffering from chloroquine poisoning.
Akosile stated this in a tweet today quoting the Senior Special Assistant to the governor on health, Oreoluwa Finnih.
He warned people against harming themselves through the indiscriminate use of the drug.
The warning came a day after American President Donald Trump announced that the US has approved the anti-malarial drug for use as a treatment against coronavirus.
The Director-General, National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Prof. Christianah Adeyeye, has however warned that the agency only approved the use of chloroquine for clinical trials in the research for a cure for the pandemic.
Akosile’s tweet reads, “Hospitals now receiving patients suffering from Chloroquine Poisoning, says Gov @jidesanwoolu’s SSA on Health, Dr @Oreoluwa_Finnih. She urged people against massive consumption of Chloroquine as a measure to fight #Coronavirus.”
The demand for chloroquine, an oral artemisinin-based monotherapy (oAMTs) for malaria treatment, spiked shortly after President Trump’s spoke of its possibility to treat COVID-19.
But the head of the US Food and Drug Administration, Stephen Hahn, later contradicted Trump saying the agency was still working to examine all possibilities.
See Akosile’s tweet: