Growing up in Kenya in the 80s, it was common to take chloroquine as an anti-mal... | Hacker News

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		sdiq on March 17, 2020 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Chloroquine has shown apparent efficacy in treatme... Growing up in Kenya in the 80s, it was common to take chloroquine as an anti-malarial medicine. I took it several times and the same applied to almost every other person I knew. Other than being a very bitter medicine, I do not remember any other side effects. This was commonly prescribed and available over the counter. However, in the 90s, doctors started encouraging people to take newer anti-malarial medicines because the of drug resistance of the malaria parasites. However,I know of only one person who ever got blind from taking anti-malarial medicine and that was not exactly chloroquine but quinine. There are differences between the two. As per the Wikipedia page, chloroquine is considered a safe and essential medicine by the WHO.

sdiq on March 17, 2020 [–]

I realise even quinine is in the list of essential medicines and also considered safe by the WHO.

Joker_vD on March 17, 2020 | [–]

There is a lot of stuff on this list that is definitely not "safe": for example, morphine, atropine.

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