Can vaccines still save the world?

203 years ago on April 15, Dr. Francisco Javier de Balmis arrived in the Philippine islands on board the corvette ship “Maria Pita”, bringing with him the first smallpox vaccine in the country. Balmis was the royal doctor of Spain’s King Charles IV who commissioned him to undertake the Balmis Expedition, with the aim of applying the then recently discovered smallpox vaccine to the Canary Islands, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, the Philippines and China. Historians said that before the group arrived on Philippine shores, Dr. Balmis had to take 25 Mexican orphans aged four to six years old to serve as vaccine repositories in the absence of cold refrigeration to preserve the vaccines during the two-month voyage to the Philippines.

Balmis’ project was part of a total world campaign to cure the contagious smallpox disease using the vaccine developed by army surgeon and country doctor, Edward Jenner in 1796. He experimented with the related cow-pox virus to build immunity against the deadly scourge of smallpox. In 1980, after a massive, worldwide outbreak search and vaccination program, the World Health Organization declared the whole world free from endemic smallpox, long considered to be the most deadly and persistent human pathogenic disease. The word “Vaccination” itself was the word Jenner invented for his treatment (from the Latin vacca, a cow). His innovation was so successful that the same word was adopted by Pasteur for immunization against any disease.

In the history of man, infectious diseases have on many occasions brought about tremendous catastrophes. There have been so many accomplishments to eradicate and cure diseases from the beginning of time. But still the threat remains and we need to mount a relentless campaign to fight against infectious diseases. As the world increases interaction beyond country borders, the threat of infectious diseases and new viruses increase year by year.

Lately we read of the news about multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis strains spreading across the Asia-Pacific. These refer to TB bacteria that are immune to several types of medicines. This poses a serious threat to global public health considering treatment options are either limited or non-existent. WHO also predicts a greater incidence of diseases such as malaria, diarrhea and malnutrition due to changing weather patterns. In many of our provinces, cases of the dreaded dengue fever have been reported on the upsurge. Health Secretary Francisco Duque III attributed the significant increase in the number of dengue cases to the abnormal change in climate. Fluctuating temperatures, humidity and precipitation shorten the incubation period of the virus, leading to more incidence of the disease.

Progress has its price. The world now is not as simple as it was during the 18th century and even the diseases seem to need more complicated treatments. Many countries, most especially in the Asia-Pacific region, lack the capacity and the facilities to monitor multi-drug resistant diseases, causing them to spread undetected and untreated. This is because the world and its environment have changed a great deal. The effects of global warming and climate change are already devastating as it is right now, with the food supply already being threatened.

The natural environment has been compromised by the human activities that have taken place through the centuries. The planet should be healed if we expect its peoples to be healthy. This is a big challenge.