Anakalusugan party-list Rep. Mike Defensor on Saturday asked the Department of Health not to run after doctors who prescribed the experimental COVID-19 drug ivermectin to poor people who needed it.
“It is seldom that I ask for help and support for my advocacies and beliefs. As a public official, I have accepted the fact that I am ‘fair game’ and people may attack me and I just have to roll with the punches and hope that my arguments will come to light,” Defensor said in a social media post.
“But our doctors do not deserve this! They have put their names and practice on the line for the love of our people and nation. They didn’t have to do that. They could have remained quiet and toed the line. They spoke and they acted knowing that silence will lead to the death of our people. They were just being true to their Hippocratic oath!” he said.
He was referring to physicians who wrote prescriptions for ivermectin during his and Sagip Rep. Rodante Marcoleta’s “community pan-three” project in Quezon City on Thursday.
Defensoir said the poor wanted access to inexpensive therapeutic medicine to fight COVID-19 “because the drugs the DOH and the Food and Drug Administration are promoting are for the rich.”
“Remdesivir, for instance, costs from P12,000 to P48,000 per vial, and you need two vials a day. On the other hand, ivermectin costs only P35 per tablet, and only one tablet is needed daily. The DOH and FDA are allowing the use of remdesivir, while cracking down on ivermectin. Their bias is for the rich and against the poor,” he added.
Meanwhile, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III asked Quezon City residents who received ivermectin to report any adverse effects after taking the anti-parasitic drug.
Duque made the appeal in an ambush interview after the simultaneous symbolic vaccination of workers under the Priority Group A4 program in Quezon City.