By Tabora Bojang
The acting director of health, Dr Mustapha Bittaye has said The Gambia will be in no rush to use Madagascar’s anti-Covid-19 herbal drug on hospitalized patients, since all the registered cases in the country are stable and not between life and death.
“Some countries have already agreed to use it but for Gambia we have not said we are using it; at least we are going to deal with our normal procedures but just as any other medicine, it has to go through phases of trials based on the data we have until it is satisfied that we can use it generally on all patients,” Dr. Bittaye told The Standard.
Some African countries have approved the Island nation’s Covid Organics claimed to prevent and cure Covid-19 with The Gambia also receiving its consignment Monday as part of a gift to Ecowas countries.
Dr. Bittaye added the health Ministry thinks the country’s Covid-19 responses on the ground are doing well and there is need to continue on such gains “so that we don’t use any medication.”
“For us we are lucky our patients are all stable now.
It is not like they are all fighting for their lives. We don’t have to quickly use it.What I am saying is that right now, our patients are stable so we don’t need to give them any medicine that we did not prove, so we just have to manage them.”
“These trials require big numbers, so we are not hoping to use this medicine as we want to contain the disease and continue to work on the prevention,” Dr Bittaye stated.
Meanwhile, The Gambia yesterday registered a new Covid-19 case.
The new case, a Gambian who was in quarantine for having a recent travel history to Senegal, became the 23rd case for the country.
The health ministry also revealed that there are three probable cases, 2 Senegalese and one Guinean, while 6 persons were newly taken into quarantine.
