The Department of Health will be spending another P1 billion to purchase remdesivir, a medicine which was not recommended by the World Health Organization to treat COVID-19 patients.
Deputy Speaker and Buhay Rep. Lito Atienza tagged this DOH move as a “wasteful double standard of promoting a very expensive investigational drug such as remdesivir, while stonewalling other potential low-priced treatments, including human-grade ivermectin that costs only P35 to P40 per capsule.”
Remdesivir cost P8,500 per vial.
“The DOH should stop importing and using remdesivir. Otherwise, the public will start suspecting that some (department) officials are making money on the purchases,” Atienza said.
In its Therapeutics and COVID-19 Living Guideline, the WHO “recommend against administering remdesivir in addition to standard care. There isn’t enough evidence to support to use of remdesivir in hospitalized COVID-19 patients, regardless of disease severity.”
“In ditching remdesivir, the WHO is also rightly worried that use of the costly drug might divert and deplete limited public money that may be better spent to prevent the spread of COVID-19 via more aggressive testing, contact tracing and isolation strategies,” Atienza added.
The DOH earlier said that its Disease Prevention and Control Bureau has earmarked another P1 billion to procure additional stocks of remdesivir that were already running low.
Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)
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