Another conundrum is whether many more lives could have been saved by the early adoption of ivermectin, a repurposed drug, with a long track record of safety for use in parasitic diseases but also shown to have antiviral properties. Numerous articles summarised by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance have reported successful use both in treatment and prevention of COVID-19 but have been criticised for lack of peer reviewed RCT data. Last week Dr Tess Lawrie from the Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy and colleagues published a peer reviewed systematic review and meta-analysis in the American Journal of Therapeutics that showed moderate-certainty evidence of large reductions in COVID-19 deaths. With mild to moderate disease, ivermectin reaches the threshold for ‘high certainty’ of efficacy meaning it appears to be of immense benefit in both the treatment and prevention of COVID-19.
HART has previously highlighted YouTube’s ‘COVID-19 medical misinformation policy’ which outlaws any claims that ivermectin is an effective treatment for the disease. Unfortunately, the influence of pharmaceutical lobbying in preventing the early adoption of ivermectin is evident and it is the sick and dying who inevitably suffer in a system where profit is a huge driver in dictating what does and does not reach the market. There is a point at which enough evidence of efficacy of a medicine has been provided and anything beyond that is deemed ‘unnecessary’. Ivermectin has long since reached this threshold and yet there is still more stalling with the insistence of running yet another study, funded by those with vested interests in seeing the trial fail.
There are many obvious methodological problems that have already been identified with the study design, which mean it will likely fail to show efficacy. The Indian Bar Association has issued a legal notice on the WHO in objection to its pressure on Indian states to discontinue the use of ivermectin during their recent surge. We urge the government and GPs to independently review the evidence around ivermectin and to critically evaluate whether this in fact offers a far safer alternative in the prevention of COVID-19 deaths than the experimental vaccines currently being rolled out.
Source: Hart Group
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