TORONTO – This past week was an interesting week on the COVID 19 front from many perspectives but the most intriguing for me was the news that the current director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) is running again for a 5 year term. The current Director-General (in the pic, from www.who.int) in my opinion as head of the WHO has just been part of a Global Failure and yet he is seeking another 5-year appointment, which to-date is uncontested. 

You would have thought that the WHO with a budget of 7.2 Billion from its member nations would have gathered to-gether the best scientific and medical minds of the G20 and or NATO nations and had a brainstorming session to discuss the procedures that each country should implement should the world be presented with a Global Pandemic of any kind. It is not as if we had not had serious indicators of a future global pandemic; after all we had already experienced the threat of SARS and HIV.

An organization like the WHO should have had in place more than one Global procedure that any Nation could immediately implement if confronted with a possible Pandemic, even if it is of unknown origins.

Although I am not pro mandated treatments; I do believe in Prevention. In this case our Government and Medical community have done a fine job in the context that for the longest time we did not have any idea regarding the true virulence of this particular virus and who was at risk of severe illness and or death. In the context of what was known in the early days of 2020; the extreme measures taken to-date do make sense since the first order of business is when faced with a fast spreading virus of unknown origins is to get the contagion under control and that we have done.

But now it is time to get back to the practise of evidence-based medicine. It is important for the Public to understand that the normal practise is to prescribe medicines that have been developed and approved to treat a specific disease. The FDA and Health Canada rarely approve drugs to prevent a disease except for Vaccines; and in a few instances some drugs. For example, our cholesterol lowering drugs were developed based on the famous Framingham Heart Study that collected epidemiological data for over 50 years just to identify the risks factors for cardiovascular disease. It was from that epidemiological study that we learnt that it was not high cholesterol alone that was a cardiovascular risk factor but also diabetes, high blood pressure, family history and a history of smoking etc. That data changed our lifestyles and the treatment of Heart disease

To-date, we have identified some risk factors for COVID 19 like age but because there are always reported examples of young people dying from COVID 19 we continue to respond in the extreme rather than using evidence-based data. To continue to do so is a very risky way of prescribing medicines

As a Clinical Scientist, I would like to suggest that our priority at this time is for every nation to analyze their Hospital data on patients who have either been on ventilator support and or have died after contracting COVID 19. We do not have to wait many years for this epidemiology study since every hospital in every nation around the Globe have already collected and continue to collect this epidemiological data. That data can be the basis of evidence based Vaccine treatment for COVID 19 and its family variants, going forward.

We may still find that those most vulnerable are those who are older but not only because of age but also because with age comes a higher incidence of risk factors that would cause someone to stop breathing and therefore need a ventilator and or die with COVID 19.

Therefore I would like to speculate and theorize as the basis for conducting a Global hospital-based epidemiology study that we may be able to prevent this Virus by focusing our Vaccine on patients with these risk factors regardless of age:
– Known Cardiovascular disease
– Diabetes
– Immune Diseases
– History of Cancer and or current t diagnosis
– Those who are long time addicts of Alcohol or other drugs
– Respiratory diseases such as Asthma or Chronic Bronchitis or severe respiratory allergies
– Those that are older and showing signs of a weak state
– Children with a history of Asthma and or prone to annual influenza
– Children with cystic fibrosis
– Those who work in toxic environments like a Chemical company etc. or who are exposed to TAR fumes etc.
– Those who work in enclosed environments like airplanes or work in the mines etc.

I am not sure what the WHO does with their but maybe they should use the budget for the above study. I would suggest to Canada, the USA and Italy and others that we make the WHO accountable for their recent failures and ask for leadership that is focused on Health prevention for I am certain this is not our last Global threat.

Carmella Pitoscia-Angus
BScN., MSc., MBA