How Trump's 'game-changer' drug is boosting nationalism in Brazil and India

HCQ has now been removed by the US Federal Drug Administration's list of drugs approved for use against Covid-19, yet both India and Brazil continue to recommend its use as a treatment.

As Covid-19 spread around the world in early 2020, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), an anti-malaria drug touted as a miracle cure by the US president Donald Trump, triggered a global, polarised debate with significant geopolitical impacts.

The debate around HCQ in the United States was widely covered in international English-language media, but the controversy swirling around the same drug in Brazil and India — two countries where partisanship is equally as rife — has received less attention.

The countries deployed drastically different responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. India declared a national lockdown on March 25, while Brazil never instituted one. In both countries, however, the HCQ debate quickly became a useful rhetorical lever to push nationalist positions. Even as HCQ's efficacy remained unproven, its use was aggressively touted by Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.

HCQ has now been removed by the US Federal Drug Administration's list of drugs approved for use against Covid-19, yet both India and Brazil continue to recommend its use as a treatment.

Brazil and India have plenty in common. Both are middle-income economies and large democracies that have elected far-right nationalist leaders in the past decade. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have galvanized support around Hindu-nationalist sentiment in an attempt to raise India’s profile as an international powerhouse. Brazil elected Bolsonaro president in 2018 on a platform that blended tough-on-crime-and-corruption rhetoric with hardline cultural conservatism and ultra-liberal economic policy that promised sweeping labor and environmental deregulation.

I am doing fine after taking a two-week course of hydroxychloroquine: Trump

Trump has spent weeks pushing the drug as a potential treatment or prophylaxis for Covid-19 against the cautionary advice of many of his administration's top medical professionals.

President Donald Trump says he's doing fine after taking a two-week course of an unproven malaria drug for Covid-19.

Trump was addressing his disclosure last week that he was taking hydroxychloroquine and a zinc supplement.

He said the regimen was meant to help prevent infection after two White House staffers tested positive for the coronavirus.

Trump has spent weeks pushing the drug as a potential treatment or prophylaxis for Covid-19 against the cautionary advice of many of his administration's top medical professionals.

ALSO READ: Coronavirus LIVE: India cases at 138,845; Global tally crosses 5.5-mn mark

Speaking in an interview aired on the Sunday news program Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson, Trump said that "I just finished the course of drug treatments and to the best of my knowledge, here I am. If it's something that helps, that's all I want."

Covid-19 impact: Hydroxychloroquine's share in pharma exports minuscule

Manufacturers say there is enough stock for local needs.

India, the world’s largest producer of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), exported $51 million worth of the drug in FY19. This was a minuscule portion of the country’s $19-billion pharma exports.

In FY20, however, exports had dipped to $36 million till February. With US President Donald Trump campaigning for HCQ, global demand for the inexpensive drug has surged all of a sudden. Countries like Brazil and India’s SAARC neighbours have sought the drug from India.

The Centre itself has requisitioned 100 million tablets from Ipca Laboratories and Cadila Healthcare. Manufacturers claim there is enough stock for the Indian market, and that the surplus could be exported. They are gearing up to supply the same to the government within this month.

Further, China does not make HCQ and India is the lead global supplier, they add.

HCQ and chloroquine phosphate are in the same class of drugs. Chloroquine is an anti-malarial used to prevent and treat malaria.

HCQ, on the other hand, is used to treat auto-immune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and as a third-line treatment for diabetes.

Some health researchers have used HCQ, along with a combination of a common antibiotic azithromycin, as a potential treatment for Covid-19. In a government advisory, India recommended the use of HCQ for healthcare workers and high-risk individuals to prevent contracting the infection.