Our world is indeed so fascinating, where mankind is in possession of a predictable lethal power to annihilate fellow citizens of any country or countries – just in minutes or hours or days, as it would decide. Whereas, any sudden attack of an unpredictable crippling power of unknown microbes, can make the same mankind feel helpless – grappling to save lives of the citizens – along with its socioeconomic fabric.
Because of the sudden nature of such crippling attacks, mankind is put to fight against time to build a new arsenal of medicines and vaccines – while defending itself under an umbrella of preventive measures. It’s not that such a situation was never envisaged. On the contrary, as we shall see below, the warning from the same came from several credible sources. Even Bill Gates during a TED Talk five years ago had warned: “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war – not missiles, but microbes.”
A few years later, the 2018 publication of the World Health Organization (WHO) – ‘Managing epidemics,’ articulated a similar cautionary note, which I am quoting in verbatim: “We are continuously learning about the unpredictable powers of nature. This is nowhere more true than in the continuous evolution of new infectious threats to human health that emerge – often without warning – from the natural environment.” Elaborating the point, it further cautioned: “Given the effects of globalization, the intense mobility of human populations, and the relentless urbanization, it is likely that the next emerging virus will also spread fast and far. It is impossible to predict the nature of this virus or its source, or where it will start spreading.”
Ironically, in about a year’s time, by end 2019, a new Coronavirus broke out in Wuhan of China. From January to March 22, 2020, 13,569 people, reportedly, died globally due to Coronavirus (Covid 19) infection. In India, as I write as I write during 14 hours long public curfew, 341 confirmed cases and 6 deaths have been reported. This outbreak has now shaken, almost the entire world – more than even before. The reverberation of the life-shattering impact of the disease, is now being felt and heard across all the facets of human life, including social, economic and political. Thus, the broad point to ponder in this article: Why the mankind can’t do what a new microbe can?
Various elements to it:
There are various elements of the above broad issue. A comprehensive response to which would involve, at least, two critical sub-questions:
- Was it avoidable? If so, to what extent?
- Or, at least, could its overall impact have been blunted?
Moving in that direction, let me try to explore some important facts that may help taking an unknown microbe bull by the horn, if such calamity strikes again – unannounced, in future.
None of these facts were unknown:
As we have seen above, the possibility of emergence and a sudden crippling strike of a new microbe was not unknown, including the warning of a global crisis from the W.H.O. Besides, ‘nearly 50,000 men, women and children are dying every day from infectious diseases; many of these diseases could be prevented or cured for as little as a single dollar per head.’
Another interesting report: ‘Global rise in human infectious disease outbreaks,’ published in the Journal of the Royal Society interface on December 06, 2014, presents more facts. It says: Since 1980, over the last 30 years till 2014, outbreaks of infectious disease mostly caused by bacteria and viruses are steadily increasing with different health impact in different countries.
Several reasons for the high death rate related to infectious disease:
Several reasons could be attributed to high death rates for infectious disease, despite the availability of a large number of powerful antibiotics in the world, which include the following:
- Developing nations with lesser access to drugs.
- Fast development of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) owing to misuse and abuse of antibiotics.
- Emergence of new bacteria and viruses, such as, Covid19 catching the population off-guard, as is being warned by top experts, from time to time.
Several times in the past, I wrote on the subjects of access to medicine, Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), as well as the recent Coronavirus outbreak. Nevertheless, for this specific discussion, I shall focus only on the second and the third points, in the reverse order, with a different perspective.
Fresh threats of new infections are ongoing:
As the 2018 paper of ‘Managing epidemics’, published by the World Health Organization (WHO) had articulated – besides new microbial pandemics, the history of previous viral outbreaks can also possibly repeat themselves. That means: ‘A new HIV, a new Ebola, a new plague, a new influenza pandemic are not mere probabilities. Whether transmitted by mosquitoes, other insects, contact with animals or person-to-person, the only major uncertainty is when they, or something equally lethal, will arrive.’
As these being ‘newer’ types – just as Covid19 is so different from…continue reading…
No comments:
Post a Comment