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France bans hydroxychloroquine drug favoured by Donald Trump to treat Covid-19 patients

Bottle and pills of hydroxychloroquine as they sit on a counter at Rock Canyon Pharmacy in Provo, Utah - GEORGE FREY /AFP
Bottle and pills of hydroxychloroquine as they sit on a counter at Rock Canyon Pharmacy in Provo, Utah - GEORGE FREY /AFP

France has scrapped a decree allowing hospital doctors to administer hydroxychloroquine, a controversial and potentially harmful drug that Donald Trump, the US president, has said he is taking preventatively to ward off Covid-19.

The announcement comes two days after the World Health Organization said it was pausing a large trial of the malaria drug, also used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, due to safety concerns.

British medical journal The Lancet published last week a comprehensive study which found that patients taking hydroxychloroquine suffered higher death rates and irregular heartbeats, adding to a string of other disappointing results.

France decided at the end of March to allow the use of hydroxychloroquine in specific situations and in hospitals only.

With no vaccine or treatment available, some doctors started prescribing the drug after the coronavirus broke despite a lack of research to demonstrate it was effective.

The highest-profile among them was a French infectious disease specialist. Didier Raoult apparently convinced Mr Trump, who stunned his own administration last week by revealing he was taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure against Covid-19.

Under the new French rules, the drug can be used only in clinical trials to test its efficacy against coronavirus. That leaves a question mark over whether Dr Raoult can continue using it at his hospital in Marseille in the south.

Dr Raoult, who is seen as a brilliant but uncontrollable medical maverick, has already rejected the study in the Lancet as “lousy".

“Here (at his Marseille clinic), we have had 4,000 patients come through. Don’t think that I’m going to change my mind just because people muck about with big data, a totally delusional fantasy that takes data about whose quality we know nothing and mixes everything up,” he claimed.

“I don't know whether hydroxychloroquine kills people elsewhere but here it saves lives.”

Besides France, American regulators have also advised against taking the drug because of health risks.

That failed to deter President Trump, who said last week that "I've heard a lot of good stories" about its potential in the coronavirus fight.

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro has also trumpeted hydroxychloroquine, and the country's health ministry continues to recommend it despite the WHO suspending trials.