NIVEDITA MOOKERJI Leave no space for doubt
Baba Ramdev’s creations to fight Covid must go through the rigours of scientific verification and clinical trials before being sold in the market
Even as controversy continues to rage around hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), the spotlight is on a new indigenous Covid-19 cure, Coronil. Unlike in the case of antimalarial drug HCQ being used to prevent Covid, global majors such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Lancet have not reacted to Baba Ramdev’s creations, Divya Coronil and Swasari Vati, so far. Other authorities monitoring the medical side of the pandemic — such as the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the multiple high-powered committees, including a taskforce headed by Niti Aayog member V K Paul — too have not placed their observation in the public domain yet.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has remained silent as well after the yoga teacher, who presides over the Patanjali empire, announced the magical remedies at a press conference in Haridwar on Tuesday. The only representative of the government to have spoken out was Ayush Minister Shripad Naik who stopped advertising of the Patanjali drugs in the absence of any approval. Naik made those points in back-to-back TV interviews too, without any strong accusations though.
Reports suggest the drugs would not be sold till approvals are given, but there’s lack of clarity on that front. Also, green signal will have to come from the Central Ethics Committee, chaired by Prof Sunil Kohli from the Department of Medicine, Hamdard Institute of Medical Sciences & Research, before people can access Coronil and the accompanying immunity kit for a little over ~500.
But, is this committee, set up last month, competent to give a nod for a cure that the world is waiting for and spending billions of dollars in R&D? Besides Prof Kohli, here’s the composition — Prof D S Arya from the Department of Pharmacology at AIIMS, Prof Idris Ahmad from A&U Tibbia College, Unani physician Shakeel Ahmad Tamanna, Mohd Jamshed from the Department of Management Studies at Jamia Hamdard, Delhi High Court advocate Kumar Onkareshwar, former teacher at Jamia Milia Islamia, Mohd Suleman, and assistant director (Unani) at the Central
Council for Research in Unani Medicine (CCRUM), the umbrella body for the Ministry of Ayush.
The ministry on its website has mentioned the members of the ethics committee as experts in different disciplines, while stating that the panel would “examine the multi-centric clinical trials or human clinical trials, which may have to be carried out in certain specific conditions, like present Covid-19 or any other clinical trials referred to it by the CCRUM headquarters for examination and approval in accordance with the ICMR national ethical guidelines for biomedical and health research involving human participants”.
Since Ayush, a bona fide ministry under the Union government, set up the central ethics committee with the objective of clinical trials for Covid, it’s even more important that the top authorities should be alive to the current developments. A vaccine is yet to be found anywhere in the world and there’s no evidence yet of a medicine that treats a serious Covid case. In that backdrop if an ayurveda drug comes into the market with the promise to cure it in a few days, there will be takers in large numbers to avoid the heated train coaches or the quarantine beds in makeshift hospitals. And in the sheer hope to survive the infection. That is the danger that the government must ward off in these delicate times.
The government has done well to invoke the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, which came into existence way back in 1954. It’s meant to control advertising of those drugs and remedies that claim to have magical properties, terming such an act a cognisable offence. However, any responsible government must monitor the situation closely and should bring in experts from the medical field before approving an ayurveda drug for Covid that has killed around 15,000 in India and more than 477,000 around the world in the absence of a cure.
It’s one thing to come out with a concoction to boost immunity, and quite another to promise a magical drug that will eliminate all the uncertainties linked to Covid. True that ‘kadha’, a home-made concoction of herbs, became popular overnight when the PM recommended it to build immunity against Covid in his address to the nation, but Coronil is no ‘kadha’. The “drug” must go through the rigours of scientific verification and clinical trials that the biggest names in the pharma world are busy doing right now.