Covid-19

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has challenged healthcare systems around the world. Unfortunately, failure has ensued: high-income countries have succumbed to the global emergency despite highly prepared human and technological assets. There is no current consensus on pharmacological management of COVID-19, but chloroquine phosphate (CQ) has emerged as a possible therapeutical candidate.

Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) is an old medication for malaria. In addition to handling this parasitic disease, HCQ is also used to treat a number of autoimmune disorders including rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus when other medications are not effective. Recently a new viral infection (COVID-19) is rocking the entire world so much that it has already taken more than 200,000 lives throughout the world within the last two months and the World Health Organization was forced to declare it as a pandemic on March 11, 2020.

The unprecedented global coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has rapidly spread to all continents (WHO, 2020a). Whilst spread to Africa has been slow, there are now increasing numbers of COVID-19 being reported from African countries who are preparing themselves (Kapata et al., 2020) for an exponential rise in numbers of cases. As of 24^th March 2020, there have been 372,757 confirmed COVIDD-19 cases reported to the WHO with 16,231 deaths. In Africa there have been 1305 cases with 25 deaths reported from 33 countries (WHO, 2020b).

Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are medications that have been used for a long time. Their most common use is for the treatment and prophylaxis of malaria. However, these antimalarial drugs are known to also have anti-inflammatory and antiviral effects and are used for several chronic diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus with low adverse effects.