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The coronavirus outbreak has stirred my memories of the heroes of modern medicine that we learned about in our primary school years.

The pandemic and the anxiety it has caused globally has called to my mind great physicians and microbiologists who at various times in medical history discovered things that definitively addressed stubborn medical problems.

They, include Louis Pasteur, Edward Jenner, Alexander Fleming, Joseph Lister, and Sir Ronald Ross.

The five were great doctors who helped find solutions to some of the worst scourges to human health.

Each of these heroes in medical history helped solve a devastating health problem and the solution that each offered not only addressed the problem at hand, but laid the foundation for contemporary scientists to carry out further research.

Their respective stories—some of which our textbooks on General Science and the History of Science and inventions regaled us with—were exciting.

They demonstrated to a perceptive child, that society depends on gifted and courageous individuals who cared little about self gain.

I took note of that motif when reading the small textbooks on topics of medical history, transport and communication, politics and education.

Regarding medical history, I particularly recalled the story about British surgeon and naturalist Edward Jenner, who developed the first vaccine for smallpox.

Our textbooks, admittedly written in simple language, indicated that Jenner was inspired to develop the vaccine after noticing that milkmaids who contracted the disease cowpox never developed smallpox.

Jenner inoculated the son of his gardener with cowpox and the boy did not develop smallpox after being repeatedly exposed to infected smallpox material.

That led to adoption of Jenner’s invention in fighting smallpox!

The story about heroes in medical history is about their insights, courage, serendipity, risk-taking, occasional self-experimentation, and in most instances, reporting what had been found.

I have no doubt that contemporary doctors and researchers in human medicine have similar “courage, serendipity, risk-taking” in their frantic search for a cure or a vaccine to the existential threat that Covid-19 portends to human life.

The doctors evidently have wealth of knowledge, and experience permeating their research efforts.

The ultimate purpose of medicine has been to heal. The doctors, therefore, have a responsibility, to mitigate the deterioration of the health of those already infected with new virus.

It is encouraging to read media  reports on the valiant efforts the medics are making to adapt relevant and current pharmaceutical products to deal with those already infected.

Meanwhile, I believe that researchers in medical sector across the globe are conducting tests for coronavirus.

Political leaders, governments and private foundations should give them the support they need to find cure for the pandemic.

Pre-emptive measures for containment of Covid-19 are very crucial to the success in the fight against the pandemic.

Prevention, the adage goes, is better than cure. The government has issued a raft of measures aimed at containing the spread of the pandemic.

We can help complement the efforts by abiding by the instructions issued.

Heroic doctors in hospitals in Kenya and across the globe are doing the best they can to treat the infected and save lives.

Other medical researchers and pharmaceutical are working overdrive to find a definitive cure for the deadly respiratory flu.

Mankind has faced a series of stubborn waves of diseases: bubonic plague, whooping cough, small pox, polio, malaria, tuberculosis and other life threatening diseases to the human race, but overcame them.

Our medical experts carry the insights, courage and compassion that such men as Pasteur, Jenner, Fleming, Lister, Ross, among other heroes of medical history held while looking for drugs that could cure or prevent mortal diseases. —The writer is Communications Officer, Ministry of Education