Source: L’Economiste.com
Morocco will not change its treatment protocol.
Morocco, which has generalized treatment with Chloroquine, does not agree with the conclusions of the study in the British review “The Lancet” or with the WHO decision concerning the “temporary” suspension of studies carried out with hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine. “Opinions differ. But, the main thing is that chloroquine is involved in viral inactivation ”, says The Economist Khalid Aït Taleb. According to the explanations of the Minister of Health, “the virus infects the host by entering the cell in several stages. One of the stages is inhibited by chloroquine ”.
“Like many scientists, I want to shout my fed up with the untruths that surround this disease and this multitude of studies that put us in confusion and generate a lack of confidence and credibility”, he said, deploring the study published in the Lancet.
Dr. Mikou
Moreover, out of the 7,556 cases of Covid-19 identified in Morocco (as of yesterday May 26, 2020, at 10 a.m.), 4,841 are cured by following the chloroquine protocol. The rest are being processed. As a reminder, considering the positive effects on the patients treated according to the protocol adopted by the scientific committee, Khalid Aït Taleb had acted, last April 8, the “starting of the treatment with chloroquine and the control of cure in the patients of Covid-19”.
The supervisory minister had thus authorised this treatment for possible symptomatic Covid-19 cases, without waiting for the virology results, but will consider stopping treatment if the test proves negative.
Opinions diverge and the soap opera continues
Treatment of Covid-19 divides the scientists. On the one hand, there is the illustrious French professor, Didier Raoult, who encourages treatment with hydroxychloroquine…
On the other, reluctant researchers who humbly await the convincing results of a clinical study in order to establish a link formal causation. And it did not take more than a publication of “Lancet” to sow doubt and fuel the controversy.
In France, the Minister of Health asked that the rules for prescribing this treatment be reviewed. The counter-attack of the famous Marseilles infectiologist Pr Didier Raoult was immediate. “I’m not going to change my mind because there is a messy study done with big data that tells something else, regardless of the newspaper in which it goes”, says Didier Raoult, remarking, “this is a completely delusional fantasy”.
Same story with Dr. Mounir Mikou, anesthesiologist and resuscitator in Fez, for whom “the study published in the British review shows that the saga continues”.
“Only the famous double-blind randomized clinical trials would indeed establish a formal causal link,” adds Dr. Mikou. However, according to him, “Morocco is quite right to maintain its treatment protocol which has proven its therapeutic effectiveness”.
