How Trump's 'game-changer' drug is boosting nationalism in Brazil and India

[Judi Lynn]

HCQ has now been removed by the US Federal Drug Administration's list of drugs approved for use against Covid-19, yet both India and Brazil continue to recommend its use as a treatment
Topics
Brazil | India | Coronavirus

Taisa Sganzerla & Devika Sakhadeo | Global Voices
Last Updated at June 19, 2020 10:59 IST

As Covid-19 spread around the world in early 2020, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), an anti-malaria drug touted as a miracle cure by the US president Donald Trump, triggered a global, polarised debate with significant geopolitical impacts.

The debate around HCQ in the United States was widely covered in international English-language media, but the controversy swirling around the same drug in Brazil and India — two countries where partisanship is equally as rife — has received less attention.

The countries deployed drastically different responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. India declared a national lockdown on March 25, while Brazil never instituted one. In both countries, however, the HCQ debate quickly became a useful rhetorical lever to push nationalist positions. Even as HCQ's efficacy remained unproven, its use was aggressively touted by Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.

HCQ has now been removed by the US Federal Drug Administration's list of drugs approved for use against Covid-19, yet both India and Brazil continue to recommend its use as a treatment.

More:
https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/how-trump-s-game-changer-drug-is-boosting-nationalism-in-brazil-and-india-120061900325_1.html