Dharavi, HCQ & some questions

Why was the trial of the drug on Dharavi residents put on hold? What prompted the authorities to restart? What connection does the coming US election have with all this?

For the past few weeks somebody, who sounds like a whistle blower, has been writing e-mails to some journalists around the world to draw attention to an unusual place — Dharavi. Mumbai’s best-known slum and setting for many Bollywood flicks and at least one Oscar-winning Hollywood hit has emerged as a hunting ground for top politicians to pharma giants, philanthropists to epidemiologists to the world media during the Covid crisis, if the whistle blower, who hasn’t revealed his identity, is taken seriously.

The e-mails, from a name that sounded unreal, went unnoticed in the crowded inbox for some days till one sat up and wrote back to the sender asking for his interest in Dharavi and more importantly in hydroxychloroquine, the most controversial drug of these times. Brushing aside those queries, he came to the point. He had decided to call out a journalist of a prominent international newspaper for a “damaging piece on Dharavi and its residents as they were caught in the pandemic”. While that was his own battle on the right and wrong of a story, a conversation led us to the main issue — whether or not hydroxychloroquine is any good in preventing Covid and how big the stakes are at play in Dharavi, an ideal clinical trial hub with more than a million people living in just 2.4 sq km space.

Quickly, the anonymous e-mailer connected the dots with Dharavi and hydroxychloroquine at the centre of it all. He narrated how Mumbai announced a trial of the drug on Dharavi residents and how it was put on hold after several research papers and surveys including one published by Lancet brought out the risk and irrelevance of such an experiment. Last week, Lancet retracted the paper and its findings while apologising to its subscribers and readers. The study had said neither chloroquine nor hydroxychloroquine with antibiotics held any significant promise as treatment for Covid-19. Following the Lancet move, even the World Health Organization, which had taken an adverse view on HCQ, reinstated trials of the drug through Solidarity, which conducts clinical trials on possible Covid treatments.

While HCQ, the malarial drug endorsed by US President Donald Trump, was making waves cutting across continents, Dharavi was suddenly looking like a melting pot for the biggest politico-medical scam in a long time. It had all the right elements — from President Trump’s upcoming election and a plot to make him lose through a virus that couldn’t have been more timely to the biggest names in Indian politics and the lockdown strategy beginning March 25. A global IT czar turned philanthropist, who allegedly played an influencer in extending the nationwide lockdown in India in May, is there as well. The whistle blower’s conspiracy theory was that the Western lobby — favouring lockdown as against Trump’s open-up policy — didn’t want India on the other side of the lockdown curve. Therefore, India was persuaded to extend the lockdown while it was ready to open up from May 18, the theory, however wild it may sound, suggests.

As for hydroxychloroquine, the use of that drug, especially in Dharavi, was seen as counter-productive to the Western narrative of growing positive cases and the increasing number of deaths in a crowded slum, according to the account given by the whistle blower. There was also the big pharma at work, trying to rubbish what hydroxychloroquine could possibly achieve at a juncture when there's no cure in sight for Covid-19.

The un-named e-mail writer also connected the sensational developments with a series of booklets “Unreported truths about Covid and lockdown”, written by Alex Berenson, former New York Times reporter and prominent lockdown critic. The self-published e-book is critical of the decisions taken by politicians to shut the economy down in the US. Amazon blocked the sale of the book initially and then changed its decision after protests by Elon Musk among others.

Meanwhile, check out the sequence of things back home around Dharavi and hydroxychloroquine. On April 14,  the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation announced it would try out hydroxychloroquine as prophylaxis (to prevent a disease) in Dharavi, Worli and Koliwada. On April 30, the plan to use the drug in Dharavi was put on hold over fear of side-effects on slum dwellers. On June 4, Lancet retracted the study it had published earlier on the efficacy of the drug.

Is it all a coincidence, the whistle blower asked, with a disclaimer that he’s no Trump fan. If not a coincidence, it’s looking quite close to a Robin Cook medical thriller. Could be Coma, Fever, Brain, Pandemic, anything. While it’s time to dig out those books, Dharavi’s hydroxychloroquine experiment is back and the number of positive cases has declined.