Daily Times

The pandemic Covid-19 has turned the world into a state of Enchlophobia. One of the obvious reasons is “the cure hasn’t found yet.” The clinical trials of discovering a vaccine are in the process and it will take two to three months to be tested as per SOPs. The only available prevention we are having now is observing isolation by social distancing so that virus transmission chain can be broken.

Just alike human intrinsic behaviors that have the tendency to adapt according to the surroundings, virus and bacterial DNA also tend to modify itself with respect to their host. Genomic comparisons suggest that Covid-19 is the result of recombination of different viruses and it is still unknown which animal – bat or pangolin – was the host where recombination took place. However, the stark reality is that it ravages the one with compromised immune system.

There were many other infectious diseases that humanity have been suffering from in the past. For instance, Spanish flu engulfed an estimated 500 million lives exactly a century ago. The 2009 swine flu pandemic infected as many as 1.4 billion people across the globe and killed 0.1 to 0.5 million people. Tuberculosis is still an infectious disease that takes 1.5 million lives annually around the globe, according to latest WHO statistics. National TB Control Program’s 2018 data shows that almost 0.4 to 0.5 million new TB patients enter in our population every year, leaving forty to fifty thousand die due to TB.

Let’s come back on covid-19. The pertinent point is what will be and what should be covid-19 aftermath measures? There will be more caring and protective attitude towards health matters. Also, there will be few industries that will burgeon after this unprecedented times. If vaccine of covid-19 is discovered in next three to four months, pharma industries around the world will get the greater chunk of benefit by preparing and exporting vaccines to all countries. Since medicine industry is the second largest industry in the world after weapon industry, it also complicit economic giants in controlling many indigenous policies of countries. With plethora of drug usage, the drug resistance has become a jarring issue outpacing the clinical uses. Over-use of medicines leave the immune system literally at hibernation that results in dependence on high drug doses. The pharma companies due to their amenable marketing strategies allure physicians to prescribe patients a long list of medicines even for a milder disease. The profit is tremendous. That is why we see physicians prescribing patients high dose antibiotics even treating a seasonal flu.

As the months will roll by, the situation will return to neo-normal in developed countries but poor hygiene conditions and low drug safety measures in third world countries will further exacerbate the post effects of covid-19. The third world countries will copiously purchase the vaccines and it might elevate their price. Medicine industries will make exponentially huge profit out of preparing and exporting the new vaccines. Usually, medicine industries thwart competition through a number of tactics, and the result is high prices, little to no competition, and drug quality problems. Else, due to internal monopoly of local medicine industries, they control and govern the health care systems’ functioning. Developed countries shall somehow endure the finances due to already established health care facilities but poor countries will face the brunt of medicine industries.

Considering Pakistan where polio cases are still surfacing; mocking our poor policies and shoddy health care system, there might be chances that covid-19 vaccine also be given to new born babies along with polio, measles and mumps vaccine. If it happens, it will cause not only financial burden on health sector of Pakistan but it will also trample human immune system to fight on its own against the disease. For a cash – starved nation like us who could ill afford it, this is jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

In these testing times when our government is showing agility on health issues, we must cash this impetus to put pressure on our provincial and federal government to ameliorate health care system in Pakistan. Health safety as a subject to be introduced in all schools and colleges to aware our students about healthy diet and measures. BMUs and secondary health departments to be equipped to fullest functionality in order to cater quality health services to everyone regardless of class difference. Hygiene standards need to be improved in working and learning places.

Covid-19 is not the last existing virus. There will be more infectious diseases that human race has to counter with. Moreover, another simmering issue is an impending climate crisis that can’t be ignored. Rather than creating sensation at the expense of substance, federal and provincial governments need to work briskly to improve health care systems that have been in limbo since long. Rather than being dependent on medicines for trivial ailments, people need to strengthen their immune system by taking healthy diet and lifestyle.

The point to ponder is will we – individually and collectively – be able to continue exercising the lessons extracted from covid-19 scenario?

The writer is a lecturer at Superior University Lahore. He is also a youth correspondent to Commonwealth in Pakistan. He can be reached at iamsohaib22@gmail.com