As I was thinking about how to
make sense of the various stories I read last week, the word ‘prism’ came
into my mind. I couldn’t think why, but it was a persistent thought. You might
remember from school days, a prism refers to a transparent solid used to
refract or scatter a beam of white light. Later that same day, a post in my
social media time line made me laugh out aloud - Where do bad rainbows go?
To Prism. It’s a light sentence, but it gives them time to reflect (thanks
to Liz Ann) and I thought okay, prism it is.
The prism I shined my light through
were the surprising number of health-related stories published last week. There
were quasi health stories like Wetherspoons banning customers from
playing music on their phones or facetiming using their phone. The ban was introduced
to promote the Weatherspoon mission of ensuring tranquillity in their pubs. Tranquillity
as in peace of mind, being calm and freedom from anxiety or anger.
I’m also at an age where I enjoy tranquillity
in my life. However, I am also of an age that puts me in danger of what has
been called ‘uncompensable heat stress’ (UHS). According to a
study published in the Lancet Planetary Health last week, the recent
heatwaves have raised my risk of serious health problems or even death for folk aged 60 and above. Its the consequence of the body losing its ability to cool itself. Just to reassure
folk, I had my older man’s health MOT recently and all appears fine. One heatwave
is okay, a succession of them, maybe not so.
Then there was the frightening story
of Donald Trump declaring the MMR vaccine (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) given
as a combined vaccination could be, in his words ‘quite lethal’. Not as
lethal, perhaps as actually catching measles. It is a high contagious disease. In
2025, 960 people died of measles in the UK. In a disease that is more likely to
kill young children, the largest group of these folk who died from measles were those
over the age of 35. We have been here
before.
In 1998, the now disgraced Andrew
Wakefield (a gastroenterologist, and not infectious diseases expert) caused a massive drop in measles vaccinations and an increase in deaths from measles in the UK during
the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Just like Trump and his medically unqualified
Secretary of Health, Wakefield’s assertions that there was a connection between
the MMR vaccine and autism is completely without scientific evidence. It is a sad case of putting populist politics before
hard science. The results are likely to be devastating for many generations of
US communities.
Politics play a part in my
penultimate prism scattering of health stories. There is a major outbreak of
Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The current outbreak is the result of a mutated
virus called Bundibugyo. There is no effective vaccine or antiviral. Nearly 5000 cases have been reported, and last week over 2300 deaths had been
recorded so far in this outbreak. Despite this already being the second
worst outbreak in history, media coverage is almost completely absent. The silence
is deafening.
The main province affected,
Ituri, is a politically unstable region, and routine public health services
such as childhood vaccinations have been severely disrupted. Equally, the US
and to some extent, the UK, have stepped back from providing overseas aid which
doesn’t help this situation. Under Trump, the US stopped its membership of the World
Health Organisation, the only viable organisation capable of mounting an
international aid response. They did so, very successfully in 2014, but the world
has changed significantly since then, and so far, there is no international response.
You might think none of these
matters to us here in the UK, but I suggest it probably does. Let me use my
last shard of light to illuminate my thinking. Yesterday, the Cyprus Ministry
of Health confirmed that a 74 year old man was being treated in an intensive
care unit for a case of West Nile virus. It is a life-threatening disease. Again, there
is no approved vaccine for this disease. It is a mosquito-borne infection,
and he had never travelled outside of Cyprus. As the world appears to be
heating up, the spread of mosquitos moves inexorably across western Europe. Perhaps
take a little time to reflect on that thought.