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Medical Scribblings - 23 June 2003

The latest epidemic to hit the news has been SARS. Fortunately it has turned out to be fairly easy to control by simple methods which would have been familiar to our Victorian ancestors. Plenty of soap and water with isolation of anyone infected. Lets hope the next one is so straight forward.

Since I started in practice a number of new infections have appeared. History is full of accounts of past epidemics which at times have been absolutely devastating. The other one that currently causes great concern is AIDS which again is quite controllable with sensible behavoir. Somehow people have great difficulty being sensible. Anyway there we are.

Most of these infections are due to viruses which live in other animal populations and would not normally cause us any problems. With the expansion of humans into new areas there is exposure to the new viruses which then mutate and pass onto people. AIDS for example appears to have jumped from Chimps to humans in the 1930s when people started to eat the chimps and has then spread arround the world by such things as sharing of needles and sexual contact without barriers.

We are fighting a losing battle to try and find drugs to combat AIDS as it is constantly mutating and finding ways round our current armoury. Sadly the results of vaccines has been disappointing and so once again we fall back on trying to tell people to behave in a sane and sensible way.

It was for very good reasons that the streets of our cities were kept clear of dirt and litter and that the habit of spitting everywhere was discouraged. Take note – a third of the population of Europe died from the Bubonic Plague.

I sound rather pessimistic but in reality we have done very well over the years in this country and should continue to do so.

John Schofield