DEPUTY Speaker and Buhay Hayaang Yumabong (Buhay) party-list Rep. Lito Atienza has scolded a former health secretary for questioning the government’s readiness to fund a clinical trial on ivermectin as treatment for coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19).

“Government itself is sponsoring the clinical trial on ivermectin because we are in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic. Filipinos are desperate for affordable prevention and treatment, and yet nobody else wants to fund a study. To put it bluntly, nobody in the private sector wants to fund any research on ivermectin because it is an inexpensive and low-margin generic drug,” Atienza said.

“Even in the United States, nobody is funding a clinical trial on ivermectin, except for the University of Minnesota which only a few days ago announced that it is conducting America’s first randomized trial on the drug to prevent and treat COVID-19,” Atienza pointed out.

Atienza was responding to Dr. Esperanza Cabral, who earlier challenged the government’s decision to earmark P22 million for the ivermectin trial.

“It is not the government that should be spending P22 million in order to prove (or disprove) that this particular substance (ivermectin) works,” Cabral, a former health secretary, said in a TV interview.

Cabral said those who wish to promote and market a drug should be ones to fund the research.

On President Rodrigo Duterte’s orders, the Department of Science and Technology (DoST) is set to conduct a clinical trial to ascertain the effectiveness of ivermectin against COVID-19.

The DoST’s Philippine Council for Health Research and Development is recruiting COVID-19 patients in Metro Manila to participate in the trial that is expected to begin in the first week of June and last for eight months.

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Ryan Ponce Pacpaco