Uganda Medical Association took aim at the Speaker of Parliament in a Tuesday statement for announcing that she had talked to an American inventor who will collaborate with a Ugandan counterpart to make a disinfectant for coronavirus.
According to the statement from the medical association, at the moment no medicine of coronavirus has been discovered and misleading people can have severe consequences.
“To put the records straight, the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus (the cause of COVID19) is a new strain of coronaviruses which was only discovered to cause human disease less than 3 months ago in Wuhan, China,” reads the statement.
“To date, there is no single medicine that can cure this disease or a vaccine that can prevent it, much as many are being tested. Any unevidenced claim of a treatment or cure without due scientific evidence and corroboration by a competent institution mandated to regulate medicines is not only incorrect, gives false hope but may also be dangerous. Instead, it diverts the population from known and effective preventive messages.”
Kadaga said on Monday that Prof. Safraz K. Niaz, who on Saturday met President Yoweri Museveni — is to work with Mathias Magoola, a Ugandan biochemist — to manufacture a disinfectant that kills coronavirus.
According to the speaker, Prof. Niaz donated the patent of the sanitizer to Uganda.
Doctors questioned the authenticity of this announcement.
“We express particular displeasure about the quack cadre scientists who desire to misinform the leadership of our country. From what we understand, whatever was purported as a treatment, cure or vaccine is actually a disinfectant meant for external body use,” the medical association said.
“It’s unlikely the same has approval by the USA Food and Drug Administration where it is claimed to have come from. Why would the USA give the patent of a potential cure to a country with not a single case when it has several thousand cases?”
Stages of testing a drug
(Adopted from the press release)
For any medicine to be deployed in Uganda, it should have undergone rigorous testing for safety and efficacy by highly trained persons.
This testing or research is called a clinical trial.
There are a minimum four stages of this research.
First, the medicine is tested in animals usually mice or rats in what we call animal studies.
If it emerges as safe and can do what it is meant to do, then the first human study or Phase 1 Clinical Trial is conducted in a handful of adult young men under extremely controlled conditions.
Medicines which pass Phase 1 studies go to Phase 2 in which the drug is given to between 40 and 160 people and compared a look-alike also called placebo or the current standard.
If again it emerges as safe and is better than placebo or the current standard, it then goes to a larger study or Phase 3 in which it is tested in several hundred or thousand people.
It is only medicines that pass all these four stages that are released for human use.
These stages last a minimum 18 months.
Moreover, the medicine should also have been manufactured in a factory that fulfills specific criteria called Good Manufacturing Practice.
In Uganda, the only competent authority that can give permission for the entry and use of medicines in the country or oversee the testing of any medicine is the National Drug Authority.
To our knowledge not any such testing, scrutiny or oversight of the medicine the speaker talked about has been undertaken by the National Drug Authority.

Coronavirus: Kadaga says Ugandan doctors "lack brains" 

https://observer.ug/news/headlines/63936-coronavirus-kadaga-says-ugandan-doctors-lack-brains

March 17, 2020

 

Written by URN

 

 

 

The speaker of parliament, Rebecca Kadaga has hit back at the Uganda Medical Association (UMA) for expressing reservations about the purported spray that can instantly kill the coronavirus.

 

Yesterday, Kadaga claimed that in two weeks' time, Uganda will start, in conjunction with a Ugandan biochemist, Mathias Magoola start co-producing a coronavirus spray after Prof Sarfaraz K. Niazi reportedly donated the patent to Uganda.

 

In a statement jointly signed by UMA president Dr Richard Idro, general secretary Dr Muhereza Mukuzi and Dr Misaki Wanyengera, a senior scientist and senior lecturer at Makerere University, UMA noted that the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus, which causes COVID-19 is a new strain of coronaviruses that was discovered to cause human disease less than 3 months ago and hence has no known cure yet.

 

The association expressed concern over 'quack cadre scientists', saying Kadaga’s statements divert the population from known and effective preventive messages. They also questioned how the United States would give the patent of a potential cure to a country without a single case of coronavirus when the country has its own thousands of cases.  

 

They also noted that the purported sanitizer hadn’t been approved by the National Drug Authority (NDA), which is legally mandated to do so. 

 

“In Uganda, the only competent authority that can give permission for the entry and use of medicines in the country or oversee the testing of any medicine is the National Drug Authority. To our knowledge not any such testing, scrutiny or oversight of the medicine the speaker talked about has been undertaken by the National Drug Authority,” the statement adds. 

 

UMA said because of the mandatory tests and trials the vaccine would have to undergo, the earliest any successful coronavirus vaccine can come on the market is next year around March. Ministry of Health also said they were unaware of Niazi's spray and in any case, the permanent secretary Dr Diana Atwine said it would have to be subjected to trials and tests. 

 

Hitting back, Kadaga said if the doctors from UMA "had brains", they would have sought for details from her instead of calling Prof Niazi 'a quack doctor' and questioning his spray. Kadaga questioned why the UMA leadership didn’t find it necessary to engage her office on her comments about her coronavirus spray instead of running to the media. 

 

"Yesterday [Monday], I informed members that some work is going on by some Ugandans to develop medicine in the country, but I would have thought that the doctors of the Uganda Medical Association had brains, they would have first come to me and said; ’we heard you talk about this can you tell us about it’ but they went ahead and issued a press statement," Kadaga said. Kadaga insists that Niazi's sanitizer is effective, advanced and kills COVID-19 instantly. She also said those calling Niazi a quack doctor are simply expressing ignorance because he teaches through his over 50 books and 100 patents in the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical field.

 

Kadaga accuses the doctors of trying to fight the new sanitizer to probably push the interests of other companies. She said Niazi's sanitizer as safe to be applied on hands and surfaces without causing any health risks. She said the plan is to massively produce and distribute the product to stop the spread of COVID-19 all over the world.

 

“I do not deal with quacks. I do not think that there is any Ugandan scientist who has done the kind of work this professor has done. Professor Niazi assisted former US President Barrack Obama in designing the Obama Care and is an advisor of the Food and Drug Administration agency in America,” Kadaga said adding that, “I do hope that these three doctors; Dr Richard Idro, Dr Muhereza Mukuzi and Dr Misaki Wanyengera, will have the courtesy to apologize for issuing the press statement without first checking with me on what I was talking about." she sais. Kadaga has also faced a backlash on social media in Uganda and internationally with some questioning her intentions and accusing her of making President Museveni part of the scheme.

 

In pictures and videos shared on social media, Kadaga is seen posing for the cameras with Museveni, Niazi and Magoola promoting the spray. The president even goes as far suggesting that even when coronavirus eventually disappears, the spray would still be bought for guarding against other viruses.