Director-General of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control, Chikwe Ihekweazu, has said that coronavirus and malaria are entirely two different diseases.
Iheweazu said this in an apparent response to a claim by DAAR Communication Chairman, Raymond Dokpesi, who said there was no difference between the two, after he underwent treatment for COVID-19.
Answering a question during the the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 on Friday, the NCDC boss said, I
”I think we all know COVID-19 is a respiratory illness caused by a virus, Malaria is caused by a parasite. They are completely different diseases.
“However, many diseases present exactly the same way in the beginning, Yellow fever presents the same way with fever at the beginning, Lassa the same way, malaria the same way.
“So, the initial presentation of a febrille illness is similar across diseases. There is no specific treatment for COVID-19 so what clinicians do is to manage your symtoms so that your body recovers as quickly as possible.
“You can have Malaria and COVID-19. That you have COVID-19 doesn’t prevent you from having Malaria and if you are in a hospital for one month, you could definitely be co-infected by both of them.
So there are many reasons why people receive similar treatments but they are two completely different diseases with different pathogenesis.”
Dokpesi, his wife, a son and four other members of the family had contacted the disease and went into isolation.
While the son too had complained that the NCDC did not show him the result it said was positive, the father said after being discharged on Thursday:
”I still have doubts in my mind. I still want to be properly educated. What is the difference between COVID-19 which is a virus and Malaria which is caused by mosquitos because every medication we were given was malartia medication. Some people, before they were told they were COVID-19 positive, they were tested in reputable laboratories and hospitals in Abuja and what they found was that they had a lot of malaria parasites in their bloodstream. So when did malaria become synonymous to COVID-19?”
