As Nigeria scrambles to curtail the Coronavirus spread in the country, the Federal University Dutse, has announced the development of a medication.
The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Fatima Batul Mukhtar said the university will soon begin the clinical trial of a plant-based COVID-19 medicine being developed.
Mukhtar, in a statement at the weekend, disclosed that the Directorate of Research and Development had been directed to find a homegrown solution for Coronavirus.
Fatima observed that globally, universities were doing all they could to assist the fight against the pandemic.
Head of the Research Team, Dr. Salihu Ibrahim, said they have collaborated with traditional medical practitioners to identify and extract medicinal plants.
The plants would be those that can cure severe fever, protracted cough and acute pneumonia.
He added that his team followed the time tested scientific steps of identifying, screening and extracting the medicinal plant.
“The second step was the phytochemical screening and analysis of the medicinal plant where phytochemical activities were determined and analyzed before the screening of the medicinal plants against microbial isolates.”
Salihu hinted that evaluation of the toxicity of the medicine on experimental animals has been completed, while evaluation of the acute toxicity safety profile for 28 days on experimental animals is in progress.
The first clinical trial on volunteers will commence on 14th May- 14th June; the clinical trial on patients with pneumonia will start on 14th June- 14th July.
In Kano State, people are dropping dead in dozens. The occurrences have been blamed on diseases such as Coronavirus and meningitis.