Sun | Jan 12, 2025

Doctors renew lobby for Ivermectin in COVID war

Published:Friday | May 21, 2021 | 12:16 AM
C. Chambers, public health nurse from the St Catherine Health Department, fills a syringe with the COVID-19 vaccine at Twickenham Park on April 12. With Jamaica's vaccination rate below 10 per cent, local doctors are lobbying for the approval of Ivermectin
C. Chambers, public health nurse from the St Catherine Health Department, fills a syringe with the COVID-19 vaccine at Twickenham Park on April 12. With Jamaica's vaccination rate below 10 per cent, local doctors are lobbying for the approval of Ivermectin to treat the disease.

The Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) is urging health ministries across the region to heed the World Health Organization’s (WHO) advice on the use of Ivermectin regardless of the severity of COVID-19 or duration of symptoms.

That warning will continue to stoke division in Jamaica, where local doctors have, from as early as February, lobbied vigorously for the approval of the drug here.

In renewed advocacy, eight doctors in both public and private practice issued an open letter to the health ministry on Monday appealing for the green light to be given for the drug’s use in the treatment of COVID-19.

The missive – signed by Professor Brendan Bain, Dr Hafeezul Mohammed, Dr Michael Banbury, Dr Neville Ballin, Dr Michael Abrahams, Dr Garth Rattray, Dr Alfred Dawes, and Dr Charles Royes – criticised WHO for being slow and sometimes incorrect in its assessment and advice on various aspects of the pandemic, specifically in relation to its stance on Ivermectin.

“In our carefully considered opinion, the available data on Ivermectin is quite adequate. There is no need to await the outcome of further trials. Any call for local trials prior to approval is unnecessary as neither time, resources, nor ethical approval would permit,” the doctors said.

The pace of Jamaica’s runaway infections, which peaked between February and March, slowed after a series of weekend lockdowns.

Overall, coronavirus cases have topped 47,672 and deaths have crossed 900. But dozens of fatalities recorded in recent days – some of which have been under investigation for several months – have caused some alarm.

WHO, the global health authority, in its Therapeutics and COVID-19: Living Guideline, issued in March, said that “the effects of Ivermectin on mortality, mechanical ventilation, hospital admission, duration of hospitalisation, and viral clearance remain uncertain because of very low certainty of evidence addressing each of these outcomes”.

CARPHA said that it does not support the use of the drug outside of “appropriately designed, well-regulated clinical trials for the treatment of COVID-19”.

On May 6, the Pan American Health Organization noted that after a review of 28 clinical trials, its assessment showed that it had no cause to change its evaluation on the medicine’s impact on reducing mortality.

But the eight Jamaican doctors have slammed the early treatment of patients as “a wait-and-see management approach”, arguing that “no specific antiviral treatment is offered during the first few days of the infection” and that therapeutic efforts were “largely reserved for the later, severe, and sometimes lethal ‘cytokine storm’ phase of the illness”.

They added that published literature indicates that a crucial benefit of using Ivermectin in the first few pre-symptomatic or early symptomatic days is that it prevents progression of COVID-19.

The medical practitioners said that emergency use approval has been granted from health regulatory authorities, including WHO and FDA, for the clinical use of other treatment regimes such as Remdesivir, convalescent plasma, and monoclonal antibodies, with far less research and data support compared to Ivermectin.

“To date, less than 10 per cent of our population has received at least one vaccination, and the real threat of viral variants with another wave of infection is looming,” the letter read.