Covid-19: cure unknown and containment uncertain

By Dr. M.A. Mohamed Saleem-March 26, 2020, 7:56 pm

The world has come to a standstill, totally disoriented and helpless rendered by the advancing coronavirus. COVID-19 respects no borders: Concrete or steel fortifications and patrolling armed guards offer no barrier to this novel microbe. Muscle-flexing countries claiming superiority over the weak and the powerless, are now going bended knees begging for help from anyone for protection and saving their citizens from the lethal consequences this virus can cause.

COVID-19 is considered “once-in-a-century pandemic”. In spite of all the bragging of technological advancement and sophistication in healthcare, the ‘Developed World’ appears to have no weapon in its medical armoury to restrain this microbial invasion. Most countries, including the US lack the basic ability to carry out large scale tests and sufficient nursing beds, ventilators and protective gear, which has aggravated problems for patients and health workers. Who should be saved using the available facilities has become the unfortunate medical choice in some countries. In a way, COVID-19 has exposed the true strengths of many countries which continue to acquire military hardware and killing machines which cannot save their own citizens from the potentially more lethal viral clutch.

Countries are surrendering and their citizens are forced to lock themselves behind closed doors shunning away even the near and dear ones while the rulers are scrambling to hold the country together. As markets and business sectors crumble, impact on social lives and the global economy will be massive and the prospect of an economic recession cannot be ruled out. 

Physcial distancing, voluntary or enforced quarantine or isolation are age old practices when faced by a plague or pandemic. Every citizen of this country is therefore duty-bound to respect and support if such measures are required to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Globally, from now on, varying measures to restrict free movement are likely to be put in place until a ‘vaccine’ is found. Although there are a lot of controversies about the effectiveness of vaccines it cannot be denied that every time the world faced a health crisis vaccine producing big pharma industries benefited.

Expert opinion is that a vaccine against COVID-19 is unlikely to be available in the short term and, by the time one is released, the microbe may even have mutated thus rendering the vaccine ineffective. There is plenty of evidence of outbreaks of the same disease even after vaccination. Dr. Suzanne Humphries, her book ‘Dissolving Illusions’, records an interesting phenomenon of a massive outbreak of smallpox in 1871 England, despite an almost 100 percent vaccination rate. Another report in February 2019 Journal of Pediatric Infectious Society raises concern about children who were primed by DTaP vaccines to be more susceptible to pertussis and claims that there is no way to decrease the increased lifetime susceptibility of such children. In any case, smaller countries like Sri Lanka may not be able to resist the arm twisting of big vaccine producers working through powerful lobbies for mandatory adoption of vaccination (even though questions about safety and rigour of testing may remain unresolved) against coronavirus.

World has witnessed a number of epidemics and pandemics during the past century and MERS, SARS, and H1N1 are recent episodes. The infamous Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-1919, killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. In the US alone, 550,000 people died, approximately 10 percent of the people afflicted with the flu. In all these cases, we also find that other professionals practicing complementary healthcare systems joined hands to fight off infections and keep people healthy just by building natural immunity. According to the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy (1921; 13:1028-43) for instance, during the period of the Spanish flu Homeopathic physicians in the USA documented more than 62,000 patients treated with homeopathy resulted in a mortality of 0.7 percent. For people who were sick enough to be hospitalized, use of conventional (allopathic) medicines had a mortality of 30 percent while with 27,000 documented hospitalized cases, homeopathy reported a mortality of 1.05 percent.

In the recent past there had been a number of claims about Homeopaths practicing in Sri Lanka having successfully prevented and cured dengue. A crude survey by way of repeated visits over a period of six months to households that were given homeo-prophylactics did not record any dengue episodes although during that period dengue prevalence in neighbourhoods had been reported. Cases of patients in other areas recovering from the complicated hemolytic stage of dengue through homeopathic interventions have also been reported. After having participated at the 4th International Conference on Integrative Oncology (Kochi, Kerala, India: February 8-9, 2020) as an observer and listening to successful cancer-interventions of complementary medicines, particularly homeopathy, the writer is surprised such professionals are not consulted and taken into confidence in Sri Lanka particularly during this COVID-19 crisis. In Sri Lanka Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH) are recognized healthcare systems but there is apparently no active involvement of such healthcare professionals in the ongoing fight against COVID-19 although they too claim to have remedies for viral attacks.

When the COVID-19 crisis was showing its ugly head the AYUSH ministry in India promptly acted and with the backing of the Central Council for Research in Homeopathy (CCRH) got the Indian government to announce prophylactic measures for COVID-19. Following this, stocks of homeopathic medicine Arsenic Album 30c were sold out in the entire country. Given the size of India’s population, the number of coronavirus victims is relatively small, and it is speculated that precautionary measures announced by India may have had an impact. Last week there was a report of a leading Homeopath, Dr. Rajan Sankaran having successfully cured some COVID-19 patients in Iran.

The whole world is desperate to find some relief from the COVID-19 pandemic and help from anywhere should be welcome. With all efforts taken by the government there is no harm if extra help to contain the disease can be found from elsewhere. Sri Lanka will not lose anything by finding out how the practitioners of complementary medicines can also help. The writer is certain that many of them will come forward and, in particular, homeopaths will volunteer to serve if they are invited. The COVID-19 crisis has also raised the need for an overhaul of the healthcare systems. Globally integrated approaches to healthcare are gaining ground and Sri Lanka can be a major player in this effort.