By Idris Salisu
The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has declared that there must be clinical trial of COVID-19 vaccines before administration on Nigerians.
NMA President, Professor Innocent Ujah, said while appearing on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily on Monday that this is to ensure that reactions to vaccines differ are monitored first since they differ among races.
“If the vaccines come to Nigeria, we need to quickly do our own evaluation of that vaccine,” he said
“I cannot say with 100 percent certainty that in the process of developing this vaccine, in the clinical trials, whether any African countries were involved. I’m not too sure, but it’s possible.
“Then because of the biology, because of the environment, because of our genetic composition, we need to do our own clinical trials very quickly before it can be used on Nigerians. While we do not question the efficacy and safety, the responses vary from place to place.
“Recall that when we were using chloroquine, the southern part was not responding to chloroquine, some parts of the north were. But in totality it was thought that chloroquine were no longer effective and we changed.”
Ujah also disclosed that NMA needs additional funding from the federal government as doctors to alleviate their suffering from the deadly pandemic.
He said at least 20 doctors had died in the past week after contracting the virus in the course of treating infected patients who failed to disclose their true health status.
“We don’t want anybody to die in the service of their country,” Ujah said. “That’s why we talk about infection prevention and control. And we believe that working with the federal government, the PTF, and the Ministry of Health, we need to continually train our health workers – doctors, nurses – and anyone who has anything to do with patients on infection prevention and control.