Nigerian GP Dr Stella Immanuel leads America’s Frontline Doctors campaign to get Hydroxychloroquine approved

NIGERIAN-born US medical practitioner Dr Stella Immanuel has led a team of American doctors to Washington DC to push the case for Hydroxychloroquine being accepted as an effective cure for Covid-19 saying it cured 350 of her patients.

In March, President Donald Trump said Hydroxychloroquine could be a game changer in the global fight against coronavirus. His comments immediately led to a scramble for the drug, which is widely produced in India and is currently being tested as a possible cure for the global Covid-19 pandemic.

However, the drug has not been accepted as a cure, as after clinical trials in the US involving 821 people across the country and Canada, scientists said the drug did not work significantly better than any other medication they had tried. According to a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine by a scientific a team from the University of Minnesota, Hydroxychloroquine is not the solution to Covid-19.

In response, a group of pro- Hydroxychloroquine doctors dressed in white coats stormed Washington DC yesterday and recorded a video in which Dr Immanuel claimed those opposing the drug were just being mischievous. Dr Immanuel, a Houston general practitioner, stood with several other colleagues on the steps of Capitol Hill to say she had successfully treated more than 350 people with coronavirus using Hydroxychloroquine.

In the video, she said she went to medical school in Nigeria where she treated malaria patients with the drug and it has proven to be equally effective against Covid-19. According to Dr Immanuel, she put herself, her staff and other doctors she knew on Hydroxychloroquine too and none of them have contracted the virus.

Dr Immanuel said: “I’m here because I have personally treated over 350 patients with Covid-19. Patients that have diabetes, patients that have high blood pressure, patients that have asthma, old people, I think my oldest patient is 92 and the result has been the same.

"I put them on Hydroxychloroquine, I put them on Zinc, I put them on Zithromax and they’re all well. We see 10 to 15 patients everyday and we give them breathing treatment but we only wear surgical mask and none of us has gotten sick, meaning that it works.”

However, her views, connected to a group called America’s Frontline Doctors, which says it wants to empower Americans to stop living in fear,  quickly came under fire. Emergency medicine doctor Anand Swaminathan said the Hydroxychloroquine propaganda from America’s Frontline Doctors was complete nonsense.

Dr Swaminathan added: “This is the message of hucksters, not doctors. Multiple well-done studies show no benefit for Hydroxychloroquine  and if your results are so good, publish, otherwise, you’re full of it.”

Many other doctors have slammed the group on Twitter, questioning their credentials and the fact they were wearing matching lab coats. Apparently, the leadership team of the America’s Frontline Doctors group includes ophthalmologists, an orthopaedic surgeon and a psychiatrist.

Its leader, Dr Simone Gold, has appeared on conservative talk radio and podcast programmes to advocate for the use of Hydroxychloroquine. In May she said there was no scientific basis that the average American should be concerned about Covid-19 and was head organiser of an open letter signed by more than 600 doctors who pushed President Trump to end what they called a national shutdown.

On her blog Dr Gold also said masks did not work, adding that the scientific usefulness of a mask has been so aggressively overstated.  Facebook has deleted the America’s Frontline Doctors video from its platform with a spokesman saying the group’s video was removed for sharing false information about cures and treatments for Covid-19.