?:abstract
|
-
When malaria researcher Nicholas White saw coronavirus infections picking up around the world 2 months ago, he immediately thought of the impact they could have on poorer countries “In fragile health care systems, if you start knocking out a few nurses and doctors, the whole thing can collapse,” says White, who is based at Mahidol University in Bangkok “So we realized that the priority would be to protect them ” White and his colleagues at the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit wondered whether widely available drugs could help They have designed a trial in which 40,000 doctors and nurses in Asia, Africa, and Europe will prophylactically receive chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine, two old drugs against malaria White hopes the trial will start this month, but its launch has been “incredibly difficult because of bureaucratic processes,” he says
|