[Photo: Health Policy Watch]
The Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea, will be the first countries to test for a Covid-19 treatment.
The two countries have started recruiting participants to test a new drug to treat persons with mild to moderate forms of Covid-19.
The study called Anticov is the largest trial in the continent to identify early Covid-19 treatments.
Researchers in the two countries will be testing a combination of two drugs – nitazoxanide and ciclesonide.
They say, Nitazoxanide, is aimed at stopping the replication of the virus, while ciclesonide decreases the likelihood of one having an inflammation making it difficult for them to breathe when infected with Covid-19.
Dr. Philippe Duneton, the executive director of Unitaid which is a global health agency said, research into promising treatments has never been more important, “ It is vital to work out which therapeutics we can add to the existing package of patient care – and how they can be best-adapted for use in low-resource settings.”
Currently there are no known treatments for Covid-19.
Other countries that will join in include Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Sudan and Uganda.