Source: News.com.au Author: Shannon Molloy
A Sydney doctor claims a head lice treatment that costs $2 could be a coronavirus cure and should be given to vulnerable patients now.
A renowned Sydney doctor is urging health authorities to give vulnerable people infected with coronavirus a cheap and freely available drug that he believes is an effective “cure”.
Frontline medical workers should also be given it preventively to lower risk and in light of the large number who have contracted COVID-19 in Victoria, he argues.
Professor Thomas Borody, a gastroenterologist credited with developing a world-first cure for peptic ulcers, saving countless lives, has stepped up his advocacy for what he believes is the “answer to Australia’s COVID-19 crisis”.
Taken together, Ivermectin – a treatment for head lice that costs as little as $2 – combined with zinc and the antibiotic Doxycycline, could be a “potential lifesaver right now”, Professor Borody said.
“These three medications are already approved,” he said.
“They do not need preclinical or clinical trials nor additional (Therapeutic Goods Administration) approvals unless the aim is to combine in a single capsule, for example.
“Patient treatment programs have been done in the US and elsewhere which indicate it can work within four to six days.”
A handful of South American countries have deployed Ivermectin as both a treatment and preventive measure after early laboratory research indicated it may eliminate COVID-19.
Professor Borody believes the combination of three approved ‘off the shelf’ drugs could be a “cure”.
Concerns have been raised about some of the Ivermectin trials, with warnings that rushing it to human use might do more harm than good in coronavirus cases.
That hasn’t stopped Professor Borody writing to both the Federal and Victorian Government urging authorities to heed his advice.
The Daily Telegraph today reported that those pleas have fallen on deaf ears and described Professor Borody as having “invented an effective, cheap, readily available treatment for COVID-19 and his own country ignored him”.
“I wrote to the federal and state governments,” he told the newspaper.
“I wasn’t even responded to … It got to a certain level of the fortress, but I don’t think it got to the decision-makers. You can see how frustrating it is, whereas a big state of India says ‘let’s use it’.”
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