- An Ohio woman asked a court to order a hospital to use ivermectin to treat her husband for COVID-19
- Butler County Judge Gregory Howard ruled in her favor, WXIX reported.
- Ivermectin is a deworming drug and is not approved for the treatment of COVID-19.
An Ohio judge ordered a hospital to use the deworming drug ivermectin on a COVID-19 patient, several outlets reported.
Butler County Judge Gregory Howard ruled in favor of a woman who asked that her husband, who is on a ventilator in West Chester Hospital with COVID-19, be treated with the unproven drug, the Ohio Capital Journal and The Enquirer reported.
Jeffrey Smith, 51, contracted COVID-19 in early July. His wife, Julie Smith, asked the court on August 20 for an emergency order to have the drug used on her husband.
On August 23, Howard ruled that Dr. Fred Wagshul should be allowed to give Smith 30mg of the drug daily for three weeks, WXIX reported.
“From the countries that we’ve seen that have emptied their hospitals. This medicine is very very effective,” Dr. Wagshul told the outlet.
Wagshul is a pulmonologist in Dayton, Ohio and a co-founder of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, a non-profit that touts the use of ivermectin for COVID-19.
However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration have warned that the drug is not proven to treat COVID-19 and can have serious side effects.
In a health advisory last week, the CDC said the FDA-approved drug can be safely used to treat some parasitic infections but can be harmful in other settings.
The CDC is especially concerned as calls to poison control rise due to people taking variations of the drug meant for horses and cows. Poison control calls about the drug rose by five-fold last month compared to the baseline number of calls before the pandemic.
Insider has reached out to Wagshul and FLCCC for comment.
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