The information was presented this Tuesday to the Lusa agency by the infectiologist Maria das Dores Mateta, urged to comment on the use of chloroquine in the treatment of the new coronavirus, a pandemic that has already caused two deaths in the country out of a total of seven positive cases.
According to Maria das Dores Mateta, covid-19, caused by the new coronavirus, is a disease that has no treatment or a specific drug, but what has been happening is the use of several drugs already used for other pathologies, such as antiretroviral for HIV, an antiviral used for Ebola and chloroquine, an antimalarial drug.
"But there is nothing yet scientifically proven to cure covid-19. Today there was a report that the head of the World Health Organization [WHO] emergency unit will meet with several experts from various countries around the world to conduct a study on these drugs," she said.
In this sense, said the doctor specialized in HIV, Angola will wait for the results of this WHO research.
The doctor stressed that although several people have used chloroquine and have been well, there are still people who die every day from the disease, because in medicine it is not the disease but the patient.
"We know that we have used chloroquine here, it has been some years since it fell into disuse here in our country, because it was so used that it has developed resistance," she recalled, adding that "on the other hand, chloroquine has some undesirable side effects and many people cannot take it.
Maria das Dores Mateta said that in Angola there are still no reports of people looking for covid-19 chloroquine, as in other countries, where there has been a great demand for this medicine, "which is endangering many people who need it".
Asked to comment on the use of medicinal plants to cure covid-19, given the emergence in recent days of several proposals for treatment presented by phytotherapists, Maria das Dores Mateta is of the same opinion: scientific studies are needed to certify its effectiveness.
The doctor compared the pandemic to the beginning of HIV in the country, when "many people were selling herbs to cure HIV, they were taking plants and then they realized that it didn't work".
"I'm a person who works with HIV, I lost some patients because of it, they gave up their medication and ran into those herbs. These herbs have no scientific evidence," he said.
On the other hand, the doctor continued, "the medications need to be formulated, dosed, to know what their reaction will be," which is often not the case with the use of these herbs.
"Because even the long ones we take many of them come from the herbs, but they are processed, dosed, formulated, the amount you have to take, based on people's weight, who should or should not take a certain drug, all that is science and people when they take those leaves take in an amount that sometimes exceeds the limit, which can cause drug intoxication," she said.
The specialist recalled that covid-19 is a new disease and "the world is not prepared either to take care of people in hospitals or for someone to say that this leaf will cure".
The new coronavirus, responsible for the covid-19 pandemic, has already infected more than 803,000 people worldwide, of whom more than 40,000 have died.
