The Consumers Association of Penang (CAP) supports the Malaysian Alliance for Effective Covid Control (MAECC)’s call for allowing Ivermectin use under the emergency use authorisation (EUA) together with the current vaccination programme. The government must respond positively to the call as it is to save lives.  If adopted, Malaysia would be among the 32 countries worldwide to use this drug in successful Covid-19 preventative and treatment programmes. Moreover, Ivermectin is a low risk, low cost and an established medicine that is readily available. It had been in use for decades, albeit for different indication(s).

Former director of the National Poison Center at Universiti Sains Malaysia Tan Sri Dzulkifli Abdul Razak pointed out that proponents of Ivermectin use argues that it represents an important “alternative” treatment for Covid-19. He added that “poorer” countries are mostly left out in the global Covid-19 vaccine rollout as the process is dominated by what is termed as vaccine “nationalism” and “apartheid”. This causes continued disparities in vaccine access worldwide. The success stories of Ivermectin use to treat Covid-19 cases are impressive despite the fact that the World Health Organization (WHO) doesn’t recommend its use for Covid-19 treatment. In April 2020,  India had the world’s highest daily infection record of 360,960 cases and a month of mass distribution of Ivermectin in the most affected states and cities, the infection rate plunged to below 7,000 daily cases.

According to Michael Capuzzo, a New York Times best-selling author and a six-time Pulitzer-nominated journalist, there are “hundreds of thousands, actually millions, of people around the world, from Uttar Pradesh in India to Peru to Brazil, who are living and not dying.” In fact, in February 2021, the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development (BIRD), an international meeting of physicians, researchers, specialists, and patients recommended Ivermectin to be immediately deployed globally.

Numerous well-documented studies showed that Ivermectin use reduces the risk of contracting Covid-19 by over 90 per cent and mortality by 68 to 91 per cent. As the total number of cases in Malaysia reached 1,027,954 and also presented with the highest number of deaths per day at 207 on 26 July 2021, we urge the government to allow the use of Ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19 as the statistics mounts. At such crucial moment during this pandemic, the government should seriously adopt Ivermectin for Covid-19 treatment together with the vaccination programme which has just managed to provide 36.13 per cent of the total population with the first dose and 16.90 per cent with the second dose.

Given the slow progress in vaccinating people and the delay in the results of the Ivermectin trial which only started in June 2021, we cannot wait any longer to be confronted by another Wave of highly infectious variants. Our healthcare system is already buckling under the pressure of daily number of positive cases. After more than a year of Movement Control Orders (MCO), the country is suffering economically and people having poor mental health. Within the first five months of 2021 there were 468 suicides. The situation is likely to deteriorate if the government continues to drag its feet in managing the pandemic effectively. Experience of countries using Ivermectin to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic gives hope of restoring normalcy here in Malaysia.  

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