ABSTRACT
Background: Rampant chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine poisoning in Nigerian hospitals following suggestions of its possible efficacy in the treatment and prevention of the newly emerged COVID-19 disease informed this survey. Objective(s): The aim of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitude and perception of the Nigerian populace on the use of chloroquine in the COVID-19 pandemic. Method(s): This cross-sectional study was done by administering an electronic questionnaire created using Google Docs, through social media cascade methods including the WhatsApp application software to capture data on chloroquine use between April 20 and June 20, 2020. Result(s): Six hundred and twenty-eight people responded to the questionnaire (response rate 99.2%, mean age 41.05 +/- 12.3) from the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria with 556 (88.5%) having tertiary level education. Only 21 (3.3%) of the respondents took chloroquine for treatment or prevention. Respondents from the North-west geopolitical zones used chloroquine 5.8 (95% CI: 1.55, 21.52, p=0.02) more times than other zones while the age group 20-29 were 8.8 times more likely to use chloroquine than any other age group (95% CI: 3.53, 21.70, p = 0.00). Female respondents were 2.3 times more likely to use chloroquine than the males (OR 2.26 95% CI: 0.90-5.68;p=0.08) and those in the income bracket of N75,000-99,000, 2.5 times more than other income groups. Conclusion(s): Young adults, North-western geopolitical zone, and female gender should be target groups for education on rational chloroquine use. The danger of chloroquine overdose should be communicated to the general population in Nigeria.Copyright © 2023 Olukosi AY et al. Licensee African Health Sciences.
ABSTRACT
Introduction/ Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted public health laboratories with shortages and an increase in the cost of RNA extraction kits. The aim of this project was to develop and validate an RNA extraction kit for use in the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection to improve COVID-19 testing and surveillance in Nigeria. Methods: The developed kit is based on the spin-column method and named the NIMR Biotech Total RNA Extraction Kit. The kit is intended for RNA extraction from different specimens, including blood, animal tissues, cell lines, bacteria, viruses, and swabs. Analytical validation of the kit for COVID-19 diagnosis was done at six different COVID-19 testing sites on 20 different nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal specimens, with the results compared using NIMR Biotech. Kit and another commercial RNA extraction kit (spin-column and magnetic-bead based). Results: Validation results showed an average correlation of 93% when compared to other spin-column based kits. When compared with the Qiagen RNA extraction kit, the performance indices of the kit were sensitivity of 94%, specificity of 100%, positive predictive value of 100%, negative predictive values of 94.7%, and accuracy of 95%. The NIMR Biotech total RNA kit showed a good correlation with the DaanGene and the Geneaid extraction kits. In both instances, there was only one disparity between the NIMR Biotech kit and these two kits. Impact: The developed RNA extraction kit from this study provides a suitable and cheaper alternative to high-end, commercially available RNA extraction kits. The adoption of this kit in all COVID-19 testing laboratories in Nigeria, and Africa, will help scale-up COVID-19 testing in Africa. Conclusion: NIMR Biotech's Total RNA extraction kit is sufficiently robust for the extraction of viral and human RNA from oropharyngeal and nasopharyngeal samples. The kit correlates better with the spin-columnbased RNA extraction method when compared to the magnetic-bead-based method and will be useful for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 infection and other RNA viruses.