India - A counter-current choice on hydroxychloroquine

India's countercurrent choice to continue using hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure is debating the country's medical and scientific community. The ICMR, the Indian council for medical research, to which the government has entrusted the response to the pandemic, has decided not only to reconfirm the use of the antimalarial but also to extend its administration to a wider audience: beyond to health workers working with COVID-19 patients, including all police and security officers in the country. If at the end of April he had discussed testing the drug on the inhabitants of the slum of Dharavi, in Mumbai, where the first outbreak had been recorded, in recent days the Indian announcement was surprising because it arrived at the same time as the World Organization of Health stopped testing after Lancet magazine demonstrated possible heart complications. To support the choice of the ICMT, the Director General Balram Bargava cites his ongoing studies, but numerous doctors contest him for not having provided scientific evidence. "We lack information on protocols, monitoring strategies, toxicity results," he told Sroll.In the scientist Amar Jessani. Numerous doctors of the prestigious AIIMS report different concerns to the news site The Print: "Many operators could see hydroxychloroquine as the miracle drug and no longer follow the rules: distance, hygiene, masks" Others still remember the probable pressure from the Indian pharmaceutical industries: 70% of the antimalarial product in the world comes from India, and production has increased exponentially since the US president said he used it as a prevention. Someone will also have to consume it. "