The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has urged traditional medicine practitioners, who claim to have developed a cure for Coronavirus, to bring their products for clinical evaluation.

This is coming against the backdrop of claims by traditional and alternative medicine practitioners and manufacturers to have developed an herbal formula that can treat and cure COVID-19.

The agency noted that most of the claims of cure or at best treatment for the symptoms of COVID-19 by traditional drug practitioners are domiciled in either the conventional news media or the social media.

It said only one application has so far been received for the treatment of the symptoms of COVID-19, and not for the cure of COVID-19 as a disease.

The Director-General of the NAFDAC, Prof Mojisola Christianah Adeyeye, in a statement in Abuja yesterday, said: “The rush to mitigate the mortality and morbidly resulting from the COVID 19 pandemic has resulted in acceleration of product development, re-purposing of formulations, off label use of therapeutics and the search for a vaccine to prevent COVID 19.

“In a bid to discover a cure, therefore, the public has witnessed quite a number of claims from different quotas – Complementary & Alternative Medicines Practitioners, Traditional healers and the Academia. It is pertinent to note, however, that these claims are domiciled in either the conventional news media or the social media.

“A claim of a cure must be subjected to clinical evaluation through well controlled, randomised clinical trials following an approved clinical trial protocol.”