Assam doctor on hydroxylchloroquine dies of heart attack

GUWAHATI: A senior anaesthetist of a private hospital in Guwahati, who was on hydroxylchloroquine to protect himself from coronavirus infection like many other doctors elsewhere in the country, died of a heart attack here on Sunday afternoon.
Utpaljit Barman (44), who was heading the anaesthetic team at Pratiksha Hospital, has divulged a shocking truth about the anti-malarial drug, which is also commonly used for treating rheumatoid arthritis.About half an hour after he suffered the attack at his home here at around 2.30 pm, he sent a message to his colleagues in a WhatsApp group saying, "HCQS (hydroxylchloroquine) is not good as prophylaxis (action taken to prevent disease). Lots of issues. I think I am having some problems after I took it."
Pratiksha Hospital medical superintendent Nirmal Hazarika said, "He took it...not just him other doctors in our hospital are also taking hydroxyl-chloroquine as a preventive measure. The signs of symptoms at the time of his death were that of a heart attack." He, however, added that hospital authorities are not yet issuing any instructions to doctors to discontinue the drug.
"He suffered the attack at his home around 2.30 pm and was taken to the hospital where he died after about one and half hour," Hazarika said. Two tablets of 200 mg have to be taken every seven days and Dr Barman had taken his last dose on March 22.
"The attack should not have happened in a person with a healthy heart. This drug is one of the safest among all the drugs used for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and is now also prescribed for some cases of uncontrolled diabetes," Guwahati-based internal medicine specialist Swarup Jyoti Saikia said.