As Trump pushes for Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as preventive drug against Coronavirus, the global liberal media has started a concerted campaign against the drug that is being touted as ‘one of the biggest game-changers’.
There are two reasons behind global ‘liberal’ media to push against the anti-malarial drug- First being it is pushed by Trump and liberal media’s hatred towards the person overshadows their logical reasoning to objectively analyze the pro’s and con’s of the drug, and second being more than 70 percent of the global supply of HCQ coming from India.
Various regulators including Indian Council of Medical Research have approved HCQ as preventive drug against Covid-19. There are anecdotal evidences from many countries that HCQ is working against the disease, and therefore, Trump argued that the country should use it, given the fact ‘We (the country and people) have got nothing to lose.’ This seems a logical argument.
But the global liberal media started concerted campaign against the drug. The Guardian, the Fabian socialist newspaper from the United Kingdom, published an article titled Trump touts hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid-19. Don’t believe the hype by Oliver Milman, environment reporter of the newspaper.
“There is no magic cure for this pandemic, no matter what Trump says,” argued Milman, who turned to a medical expert from environment reporter, for the story- as many journalists across the world do.
The Guardian was not alone in the camping against the drug and Trump, New Yorker magazine also did a story titled- Lupus (another disease treated by HCQ drug) Patients Can’t Get Meds After Trump Touts Unproven Coronavirus Treatment, and severely criticized Trump for doing harm to Lupus patients, and obliviously ignored people being saved from Covid-19 using the drug.
Vox’s Immigration Reporter Nicole Narea turned a medical expert to carry out a concerted campaign against HCQ and argued “It might not be the “game changer” Covid-19 treatment the president promised” in a story titled- Trump’s reckless promotion of hydroxychloroquine to fight coronavirus, explained.
Washington Post also did a story about the unproven credentials of HCQ.
And if all of them were making efforts, how can BBC skip the chance. The media house which has not come out of colonial hangover did a story titled Hydroxychloroquine: The unproven ‘corona drug’ Trump is threatening India for, hitting the drug, Trump, and India at the same time.
The approval of HCQ as preventive drug is a great news for India and its pharmaceutical industry, as more than 70 percent of the global supply of the drug is met by Indian companies- primarily Ipca Labs and Zycus.
Presently India produces 20 crore tablets of HCQ per month to meet domestic and global demand, and production capacity could be ramped up if needed. As per a report by Business Today, the pharmaceutical companies shall increase the production capacity to 5-6 times in the coming months to make hundreds of crores of tablets per month. Of these, 10 crore tablets would be kept for Indian use while the rest would be exported to United States and other neighboring countries.
Majority of the pharmaceutical companies which manufacture this drug have factories in Gujarat and headquartered in Mumbai. Gujarat CM, Vijay Rupani, proudly announced this and said, “Gujarat is shining the world over. US President Trump has been vigorously demanding that drug from India. Now, when the Centre has given permission for its export, Gujarat is all set to send it to the United States.”
Zydus Cadila announced that it will ramp up production by 10 times and would sell the drug at a lower price than the normal rates. This is movement of India. The world is looking for drugs that is primarily produced in India, and compare it with Nehruvian times when the country had to take American wheat as aid to fight hunger and malnutrition. This shows that India has come a long way. The global liberal media could not digest the fact that under the leadership of PM Modi, India has become savior of the world in the fight against Covid-19 through HCQ drug.
