An emergency flight has arrived carrying a life-saving drug for critically-ill COVID-19 patients from Dhaka as a humanitarian gesture.
The medicine was provided by pharmaceutical giant Beximco which is producing the anti-viral Remdesivir used in the treatment of coronavirus patients.
The special flight was operated by Tarek Khan, honourary Dutch consul general and CEO OBS Pharma, landed in Islamabad at 12:50 AM in the wee hours of Monday.
He said the flight operation was free of cost on a humanitarian basis and a well-coordinated effort between Pakistan and Bangladesh. He said there was no government involvement except permission to fly.
He said that permission was sought from Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) to bring more vials which was not approved.
Doctors on the frontlines still lack a proven treatment for the disease as researchers race to develop a vaccine. No drug is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for COVID-19, although dozens of candidates – including drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, parasites, cancer, and HIV – have been proposed and many are currently in clinical trials.
Amid so little good news, early clinical trial results for the anti-viral drug remdesivir have offered hope. The drug appeared to help patients recover faster, from 15 days to 11 days. That earned remdesivir an emergency use authorization (EUA) from the FDA, allowing it to be used more broadly outside of clinical trials.
