The Federal University of Jigawa located in Dutse, the Jigawa state capital in Northern Nigeria says it will soon commence the clinical trial of a plant-based COVID-19 medicine.
The head of the research team, Dr Salihu Ibrahim, said the first clinical trial on healthy volunteers would commence in the 2nd week of next month.
“We’ll begin the initial trial on healthy volunteers on the 14th May to 14th June, 2020 while the clinical trial on patients with pneumonia will start on 14th June to 14th July, 2020,” Dr Ibrahim said.
He said the evaluation of the toxicity of the medicine on experimental animals had 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 university collaborated with traditional medical practitioners to identify and extract medicinal plants with a record 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.
Dr Salihu Ibrahim added that the second step was the screening and analysis of the medicinal plant where phytochemical activities were determined and analysed before the screening of the medicinal plants against microbial isolates.
The Vice Chancellor of the University of Jigawa, Professor Fatima Batul Mukhtar, had in a statement said that the institution commenced research into the cure for coronavirus when the index case was detected in Nigeria on February 28.
Recall that many African countries including Ghana, Senegal and Madagascar, had evolved home grown medicines to help eradicate the pandemic.
There are reports that the United States of America expended $2.5 Million to Madagascar to help fund her COVID-19 herbal cure.
The plant based cure obtainable from the Artemisia plant, locally known in Yoruba as Ewe Egbin Zulu, Hausa as Tazargade (Baaba), and Mkpatat in Umhlonyane Ibibio has been proven to be effective in the cure for coronavirus.
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