World solidarity against COVID-19
The death of one more victim of COVID-19 last evening brought the total fatalities in the country to seven while the number of infected people detected stood at 188. While, compared with the huge numbers affected by COVID-19 in Western Europe and Northern America, this does not seem much, we must remember that we have yet to test substantial numbers of the population.
Thanks to the sharing of data and research among all the world’s medical agencies and scientific reporting media, we have the ability to compare conditions in different parts of the world. Constant sharing of scientific monitoring by national and international research agencies provides us with the range of national and regional experiences in combating the pandemic.
Aside from the amazing capacities provided us by the World Wide Web, we are today fortunate enough to have an enormous, tightly knit, global network of organisations and specialized institutions focusing on the crisis. We are well informed of every move to counter the pandemic by agencies and researchers and health administrators from the World Health Organisation downwards to national governments and our local PHIs (Public Health Inspectors).
Seven hundred years ago, when the whole of medieval Europe and parts of Asia were devastated by the ‘Black Death’ pandemic caused by the Bubonic Plague, neither the Internet nor the network of collaborating international agencies existed. Terrified populations had no idea what was causing people to fall ill and die so fast.
Historical research into that 14th century pandemic, however, has shown that in different parts of Europe, specific local experience of the disease and the efforts to treat victims actually did result in some findings at that time, especially in localised methods to combat the contagion.
In Italy, where the Plague first hit western Europe, medical practitioners of the time, after much bitter experimentation in treatment procedure, did learn that the disease was communicable among humans through the air especially from expelling of human breath (although they did not know of viruses). They also learnt that whatever the infected people handled - whether clothing or utensils or furniture – could become infected and could infect others.
At the same time, in the trading republic of Dubrovnik, in what is now Croatia, health authorities instituted the practice of ‘quarantine’ as a procedure to combat the spread of the Plague. In fact, the term seems to have been first used in that city. ‘Quarantine’ referred to the 40-day period of seclusion that was then imposed on Plague-infected people by the Dubrovnik republic authorities.
But the world did not have any system of international relations and mechanisms that enabled the quick sharing of this knowledge to other parts of Europe and Asia. If the knowledge had been shared and communications had enabled the comparison of epidemic experiences across regions, it would have certainly helped reduce the attrition of the Plague.
When the 1918 Influenza pandemic (Spanish Flu) hit Europe and spread to parts of Central and East Asia, there was a modicum of international sharing of information. Nevertheless, the world reportedly lost tens of millions of lives due to this ’flu pandemic.
Today, the world is grateful for the existence not only of a global health governance system but also of other bilateral and multilateral inter-state relationships that are enabling nations to help each other and share resources.
China, befitting its size and stature as the world’s largest producer and second largest economy, has barely waited for its own COVID-19 epidemic to ease before it has begun extending the hand of friendship. Teams of Chinese experts, equipped with their own research and experience of the epidemic, are fanning out across the world to advise other severely affected countries.
Ironically, they are now in some countries whose news media scoffed at China’s rigorous measures to overcome COVID-19.
The ‘supplier to the world’ is already producing various types of disease combating equipment, including clothing and face masks, and Beijing is shipping them all over the world from the much-vaunted USA to Europe, to Africa and to Sri Lanka. The Western news media is beginning to appreciate not only China’s sheer might but also the sophistication of Beijing’s global health diplomacy which cannot be compared with the scrounging for pandemic countering resources now resorted to by some of the First World powers.
Little Cuba has sent teams of brave doctors and medical specialists to COVID-afflicted Europe to join the frontline battle against the pandemic.
India, too, despite its own struggle against COVID-19, has gifted Sri Lanka with a consignment of valuable equipment.
We are fortunate to have two of the world’s largest manufacturers of pharmaceuticals, China and India, as close friends who have a good record of helping us in times of under-development and crisis.
Sri Lankans must take inspiration from this global human endeavour and burden-sharing to steel ourselves to show more disciplined social behaviour to win this struggle.
Thanks to the sharing of data and research among all the world’s medical agencies and scientific reporting media, we have the ability to compare conditions in different parts of the world. Constant sharing of scientific monitoring by national and international research agencies provides us with the range of national and regional experiences in combating the pandemic.
Aside from the amazing capacities provided us by the World Wide Web, we are today fortunate enough to have an enormous, tightly knit, global network of organisations and specialized institutions focusing on the crisis. We are well informed of every move to counter the pandemic by agencies and researchers and health administrators from the World Health Organisation downwards to national governments and our local PHIs (Public Health Inspectors).
Seven hundred years ago, when the whole of medieval Europe and parts of Asia were devastated by the ‘Black Death’ pandemic caused by the Bubonic Plague, neither the Internet nor the network of collaborating international agencies existed. Terrified populations had no idea what was causing people to fall ill and die so fast.
Historical research into that 14th century pandemic, however, has shown that in different parts of Europe, specific local experience of the disease and the efforts to treat victims actually did result in some findings at that time, especially in localised methods to combat the contagion.
In Italy, where the Plague first hit western Europe, medical practitioners of the time, after much bitter experimentation in treatment procedure, did learn that the disease was communicable among humans through the air especially from expelling of human breath (although they did not know of viruses). They also learnt that whatever the infected people handled - whether clothing or utensils or furniture – could become infected and could infect others.
At the same time, in the trading republic of Dubrovnik, in what is now Croatia, health authorities instituted the practice of ‘quarantine’ as a procedure to combat the spread of the Plague. In fact, the term seems to have been first used in that city. ‘Quarantine’ referred to the 40-day period of seclusion that was then imposed on Plague-infected people by the Dubrovnik republic authorities.
But the world did not have any system of international relations and mechanisms that enabled the quick sharing of this knowledge to other parts of Europe and Asia. If the knowledge had been shared and communications had enabled the comparison of epidemic experiences across regions, it would have certainly helped reduce the attrition of the Plague.
When the 1918 Influenza pandemic (Spanish Flu) hit Europe and spread to parts of Central and East Asia, there was a modicum of international sharing of information. Nevertheless, the world reportedly lost tens of millions of lives due to this ’flu pandemic.
Today, the world is grateful for the existence not only of a global health governance system but also of other bilateral and multilateral inter-state relationships that are enabling nations to help each other and share resources.
China, befitting its size and stature as the world’s largest producer and second largest economy, has barely waited for its own COVID-19 epidemic to ease before it has begun extending the hand of friendship. Teams of Chinese experts, equipped with their own research and experience of the epidemic, are fanning out across the world to advise other severely affected countries.
Ironically, they are now in some countries whose news media scoffed at China’s rigorous measures to overcome COVID-19.
The ‘supplier to the world’ is already producing various types of disease combating equipment, including clothing and face masks, and Beijing is shipping them all over the world from the much-vaunted USA to Europe, to Africa and to Sri Lanka. The Western news media is beginning to appreciate not only China’s sheer might but also the sophistication of Beijing’s global health diplomacy which cannot be compared with the scrounging for pandemic countering resources now resorted to by some of the First World powers.
Little Cuba has sent teams of brave doctors and medical specialists to COVID-afflicted Europe to join the frontline battle against the pandemic.
India, too, despite its own struggle against COVID-19, has gifted Sri Lanka with a consignment of valuable equipment.
We are fortunate to have two of the world’s largest manufacturers of pharmaceuticals, China and India, as close friends who have a good record of helping us in times of under-development and crisis.
Sri Lankans must take inspiration from this global human endeavour and burden-sharing to steel ourselves to show more disciplined social behaviour to win this struggle.
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