Pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies in Sub-Saharan Africa have dramatically increased the price of hydroxychloroquine, a drug believed to be a cure for COVID-19, according to africanews.

The news website claims the price of the drug has increased more than twenty-fold in some countries like Nigeria, with the price of a packet of 60 tablets going up to $194 up from around $8 before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out at the beginning of the year.

This has led to an increase in the sale of fake drugs with a network of counterfeit chloroquine manufacturers being arrested in Bafoussam, Cameroon in March 2020.

US President Donald Trump was one of the first world leaders to claim that hydroxychloroquine was effective in the treatment of COVID-19 but the World Health Organization and the US Food and Drug Authority discouraged its use.

Picture credit: Al Jazeera