By Modesto P. Sa-onoy
Due to the guideline of the World Health Organization, many countries prohibited the use of HCQ. While millions of this drug are stored in warehouses, hundreds die every day, economies remain in shambles, families shattered, depression rising fast and fears continue to haunt governments.
Let’s cite the case of the Philippines. A friend sent a report that Novartis, a pharmaceutical company had allocated to donate 130 million HCQ to various governments for their hospitals to treat Covid-19 patients. However, the government “must certify and approve the use of HCQ.” This was on April 30, so the drug must be in the Philippines. The first batch of HCQ was given by Novartis to our DoH for their hospitals. It is not known how many batches were given but in May the WHO told the DoH to stop using this drug.
“Aye, there’s the rub”, as Hamlet would lament. The DoH distributed the HCQ but the mystery is where the drugs now are. There are claims DoH hospitals are using the HCQ unofficially.
The brief report is sufficient to raise initial questions that went around but remained unanswered and created conspiracy theories. For instance, (1) what is the goal of this worldwide fraud? (2) Who are behind it? (3) Why this macabre operation if HCQ was a useless and harmful medication? Indeed, the doctors need not be ordered to stop prescribing a useless drug. (4) Who would gain the most if this fraud was accepted as medical fact?
The beneficiaries of this fraud would certainly be the competitors like those making anti-Covid-19 vaccines and selling the more expensive drugs. Billions of dollars are at stake. Blocking a cheap and available medicine for curing Covid-19, like the HCQ, would serve the vaccines and pricey drugs. Declaring a P1,000 (or less) cure as unsafe and ineffective would leave the remaining alternatives which are several times expensive.
So, the controversy is not just about the damaging article in The Lancet and the quickie retraction by the journal. It is about money profited at the price of human life and misery.
One reader shared information given to him by a doctor: Since March 2020 several medicines were introduced in the Philippines but these had not also been approved so they are in limbo.
On the other hand, he said HCQ and Chloroquine treatment for COVID has been known [to be effective], the reason it is being used for COVID patients in a well-known and leading hospital in the country. The problem is “these medicines have side effects such as cardiovascular problems. Because of these problems, it cannot be taken without a doctor’s supervision.” Thus, “to some people, it may do more harm than good but there is no contest that these medicines are good for Covid-19 treatment.”
Now this technical information. “About the alkalinity it produces makes it effective to be virucidal on the cellular level. That is different from taking in alkaline water or tablet. Also, H/HQ makes the zinc more absorbable in the cells which is an added antiviral effect because Zinc has antiviral properties also as well as anticancer. So H/HQ has been used in (hospital name omitted for privacy reason) since late February and March 2020. Maybe that is why they have the best recovery rate from COVID as you can see in the pie chart last March.”
The above was the answer of his doctor friend in (xxx) whether they were using hydroxychloroquine and if yes, how’s their experience with it?
In April they were still hitting over 90% recovery within three weeks (they hit 96%). Part of May, they were still leading in the recovery rate compared to hospitals in Manila. Then tragedy struck. The DoH came out with the stop usage order (about the middle of May). The hospital’s performance started to go down to below 90% towards the latter part of May.
The hospital’s performance further deteriorated in June and toward the latter part of the month they started to bring back HCQ in their protocol.
Because of the Lancet publication and DoH action we lost over a million free HCQ from Novartis. DoH blew this deal. Our front liners could have used that as prophylaxis. How many did we lose because of, what my informant describes as “stupidity”?
More next week.
