The Sunday News
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
THE world is breathlessly awaiting a World Health Organisation (WHO) discovery and announcement of an anti-coronavirus vaccine that will arrest the fatal onslaught of this obviously new disease presently claiming several hundreds of lives in various nations daily.
Meanwhile, WHO has appealed for funding to the tune of $675 million (US) to carry out research for the vaccine.
Many diseases in Zimbabwe and elsewhere are caused by either bacteria or by viruses. Those are micro-organisms and are so tiny that they can be measured only by a micron, which can show organisms that are one thousandth of a millimetre. However, bacteria are visible under the highest power of an ordinary microscope, and they can increase outside a host. That is why some laboratories grow hundreds of thousands of them when conducting some experiments. One of the diseases caused by bacteria is cholera.
Viruses are by far much smaller than bacteria and although they can survive outside a host, they cannot multiply except in living cells. In laboratories, they have to be grown in fertile living eggs on a living culture of animal tissue.
Viruses are parasites. A parasite may be defined as an organism or plant that has a one-sided nutritive relationship between itself and an animal or a plant, or, in other words, an organism living in or on another, and benefiting thereby at the expense of the other. A detailed study of parasitology is a subject that needs to be handled in its own.
Diseases caused by micro-organisms may be regarded as reactions of hosts to parasites, the sick person (or animal) being the host, and the bacterium or virus being the parasite. For an article of this magnitude, it suffices to say that when there is a disease outbreak because of some bacteria or viruses, we can liken that to a gardener whose crop has been invaded by some fungal or other disease.
The human body, however, protects itself against micro-organisms in a rather complex manner by producing immunity in one of the following ways: By having acquired or innate immunity, or by producing active or passive immunity.
Innate immunity refers to inborn or natural immunity; it is not fully understood and medical scientists have been researching why in a family some people will go down with or even die of influenza while others are not attacked by the pestilence.
Acquired immunity simply means that which is created by introducing a limited amount of parasites into a possible or potential host, resulting in the production within the host’s body of protective substances called antibodies.
When the parasite enters or bites the host’s body, it produces its own dangerous substances called antigens. Those substances trigger off the host’s antibodies to defend the host’s body. That is what vaccines and inoculations are all about, and that is what WHO is working on to combat the terrible coronavirus occurrence.
Passive immunity may be acquired by an unborn child from its mother, or it may be artificially administered by medical professionals by the introduction of blood serum, a temporary measure such as is given against flu.
Active immunity is experienced when a parasite’s victim has “manufactured” antibodies after he or she has been invaded by disease-causing parasites. That occurs in children and some people in early adulthood when they suffer from ailments such as chicken pox.
We now turn to the possibility or otherwise of WHO producing an anti-corona vaccine in weeks or even months rather than in years. Virologists are inevitably currently analysing the coronavirus and like all viruses, the organisms are so small that most are about one thousandth of one thousandth of a millimetre; scientists use what are called electron microscopes to photograph them to be able to see an outline of those organisms. It would be a very pleasant surprise if they could successfully wind up their research in the next 12 or so months.
We should always bear in mind that this world has had quite a few pandemics in parts of Europe since the time of Justinian, a Roman Emperor. In AD 542-3 when corn-carrying ships from Egypt inadvertently brought diseases to Rome. In 1348, the Black Death devastated England; the third was in 1894; the fourth was the influenza occurrence in 1918-19 which killed at least 15 million people worldwide.
Medical science was, of course, not as advanced as it is now, and the science of bacteriology was non-existent; it was started as historically recently as 1880. Before that date, doctors dealt with their patients by using signs and symptoms.
The cause of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, was not known until 1933 when Doctor Wilson Smith, Dr C H Andrewes and Dr P P Laidlow positively identified the virus. That was some 14 years after the terrible malady had caused havoc throughout the world.
In Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) some of those who survived the horrific experience fearfully remarked to the writer of this article in 1957 at Dombodema: “You never knew who would be next to be buried,” said Mr Frank Makwapula Nleya.
Concerning funds for the WHO research, countries such as China where the epidemic originated, Brunei, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Japan, Kuwait, Germany, Dubai, Canada, Sweden, Russia plus a few more can each quite easily donate all of the $675 million (US) to the project. But WHO, of course, is most likely using other methods to raise the funds rather than by begging. What is important is to come up with a vaccine without any delay whatsoever.
Meanwhile, while WHO is doing whatever it can, it is extremely advisable for national and regional organisations to plan and have protective measures in case an outbreak occurs either in one country or regionally. Radio and television programmes should be launched to educate people about at least the signs and symptoms of the disease, and what steps to take if one suspects that one has been attacked.
District hospitals need to be properly equipped with whatever, especially drugs, and masks well in advance for obvious reasons. It would be unfortunate for a coronavirus outbreak to occur anywhere in the world only to find that the vast majority are completely ignorant about it, and do not know even the most elementary measures to take to handle the patients.
We need to observe the highest hygiene standards, including oral and nasal hygiene as the coronavirus enters its hosts’ bodies through the upper respiratory tract, that is through the mouths and the nostrils, three of the male human body’s nine apertures. A woman’s body has 10 and not nine apertures. All these openings must be kept scrupulously clean, and so must be the water we drink which must be boiled for about 20 minutes (as we are not at sea level) to kill all microps.
Brushing our teeth, our tongues and gums at least twice, if not thrice, daily is advisable in the present circumstances. Cutting our fingernails short, and using cutlery for eating is obviously much more hygienic than using our fingers and palms.
The coronavirus outbreak has created a new health situation in which each person should carry a disposable tissue for nasal cleaning in case of need and to develop a habit of washing one’s hands with soap in getting home in the afternoon or evening as one will have most probably shaken hands with several people during the course of the day.
Two months is long enough a period to devise emergency plans for such things as disease epidemics bearing in mind that all that time we have been told that coronavirus occurs mostly among people who would have been at places where there are large crowds such as at schools, at churches, at food distribution centres such as market places and supermarkets, at mass sports occasions, especially soccer matches, at weddings, at funerals and at mass rallies.
– Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734328136 or through email. [email protected]
