Dutse University to Commence Clinical Trial of Plant Based COVID-19 Medication

Dutse University to Commence Clinical Trial of Plant Based COVID-19 Medication

The Vice-Chancellor, Federal University Dutse, Professor Fatima Batul Mukhtar has said that the university will soon begin the clinical trial of a plant based COVID-19 medicine being developed by the university.

She said the university swung into action as soon as the pandemic broke in Nigeria and mandated the Directorate of Research and Development to come up with home grown solution to tackle the disease.

Professor Fatima said the world over, universities are established for teaching, research and community service adding that the decision of the university to help in finding solution to this dreaded disease is part of its community service.

The Head of the Research team, Dr. Salihu Ibrahim said they have collaborated with traditional medical practioners to identity and extract medicinal plants with recorded history of use against severe fever, protracted cough and acute pneumonia.

According to him, his team followed the time tested scientific steps of identifying, screening and extracting the medicinal plant.

He said 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.

Dr. Salihu said the evaluation of the toxicity of the medicine on experimental animals has been completed adding that evaluation of the acute toxicity safety profile for 28 days on experimental animals is in progress.

The head of the Research team said the first clinical trials on heathy volunteers will commence on 14th May- 14th June, 2020 while the clinical trail on patients with Pneumonia will start on 14th June- 14th July, 2020

In a related development, the Vice- Chancellor has approved the donation of relief materials worth over N1 million naira to the government of Kano and Jigawa state .

The items which consisted of forty bags of rice and one hundred cartons of sphagett was presented to the two state government yesterday.

The Vice- Chancellor who was represented by the Deputy Bursar of the university, Alhaji Hasaan Balarebe said the items were donated to the state government as part of the university effort to contribute to the palliative being given to the less previledge to cushion the effect of COVID-19 pandemic.

She commended the efforts of the two state governments in the fight against COVID-19 adding that the citizens should compliment government effort by complying with the laid down protocol for preventing the spread of thee disease especially the stay at home order, social distancing and continuous washing of hands.

In his response the Kano state Commissioner of Information Mal. Muhammad Garba who received the donation thanked the university for the kind gesture and prayed to Allah to bring the COVID-19 pandemic to an end.

The Permanent Secretary , Jigawa state Ministry of Health, Dr. Salisu Muazu who received the donation on behalf of the state government also thanked the university for the items adding that it will go a long way to ameliorate the suffering of the needy in the state.

By PRNigeria