When in a pandemic ...do as the Romans did
Leading disease expert says modern medicine can learn a lot from ancient Roman fortress in Scotland
one of the world’s most respected epidemiologists says history books can teach us how to better handle the Covid-19 pandemic.
Professor Tom Jefferson of Oxford University reveals that studying how the Ancient Romans treated infectious patients would have helped ensure more of the NHS could have remained operational for patients with serious conditions unrelated to coronavirus. He said the hospital in a Roman fort in Perthshire was a template for how to tackle contagion. He said: “The Romans knew how to tackle a pandemic better than we have done. When they had infectious patients they were treated well away from everyone else and kept apart.
“If we had done that, the NHS would have been able to continue operating as normal instead of what we have seen happening in hospitals and clinics across the country.”
The expert, who has served as a government advisor to the UK, Australia and Italy, revealed a historic Roman site in the heart of Perthshire holds the key.
He warned that the world has changed forever and we must now plan and prepare to continue facing the invisible enemy that has brought society to its knees.
Professor Jefferson said: “We have to accept change, prepare and learn supreme adaptability to what we will face in the future.
“To do that, we need to learn from history. Close examination of the architecture of the hospital ( valetudinarium) in the Roman Legionary fortress at Inchtuthil near Perth gives us clues as to how we should develop hospitals to specifically deal with infections such as coronavirus in the future.
“Their hospital was a single-story re c t a n g u - lar str ucture with two entrances. This allowed access control and a oneway flow of people which reduced cross-infection.”
Professor Jefferson said patients with Covid- 19 or similar infectious conditions should not be taken to mainstream hospitals where they risk infecting other patients and staff.
He said: “They should be taken to a separate, specialist infectious diseases hospital, like the Romans built and like the old fever hospitals we used to have back in the day when we were battling Spanish flu and TB.
“What resonates are simple basic principles of health and hygiene, distancing, air circulation, patient flow control, light, privacy, insulation, buddy aid, maintenance of identity and above all, supreme flexibility in the face of the unknown.
“Modern- day hospitals are more like packed multistorey hotels with elevators and lay outs that are ideal breeding grounds for infection.”
He said if infectious disease or fever hospitals of the past had been kept and maintained instead of being replaced by huge modern hospitals, the NHS could have continued seeing other patients without the fear of Covid- 19 being passed.
And patients with other conditions would not have been left too terrified to seek help or attend clinics.
He said: “If we want to stay safe, we need to prepare for the future and invest in separate infectious disease hospitals which will require to be maintained and made ready for more coronavirus-type infections.
“That means general NHS hospitals can remain open and accessible to other patients in a way that just isn’t happening right now.
“Adaptability, preparedness and common sense is the way forward.
“The Romans were successful because although they never knew what they might be facing as their Empire spread far and wide, they prepared for every eventuality. That is what we must do now.
“We do not need to climb into a Delorean car and go back to the future to see the way we should go in treating our fellow human beings.
“We need to look to the basic principals learned in our past.”
Given the fractious and polarised nature of UK politics, it was inevitable, indeed, predictable, that any unilateral lifting of lockdown measures in England would be met with questniong disdain by the elected leaders of the devolved nations.
After all, since the early days of this, PM Boris Johnson has gone to great lengths to insist petty party politics will be put on the back burner for as long as coronavirus remains at large, and, cleverly evoking the wartime spirit of Churchill, chuntered that we’re all in this and will prevail together.
And up until last week that has been largely the case and has proved to be relatively successful in containing the spread of the virus.
All four nations and their respective governments largely marched in step with one another, uniting behind the science and agreeing on a single Uk-wide emergency lockdown strategy, which included a raft of spread prevention measures, banning of non-essential car journeys, support for NHS and of course billions ploughed into the economy to protect millions of people’s jobs and future livelihoods.
And all under one mantra: Stay Home: Save Lives: Protect the NHS
Well, after seven weeks of everyone doing just that in a carefully managed and arguably successful containment strategy, Boris decided to go solo, step out of line with everyone else and have England march to a different, possibly more dangerous, drum. Stay Alert: Control the Virus: Save Lives. It’s a risky move but one that, if the infection and death rate continues to drop, and there is no second spike in England, historians will remember it as a gamble, but a measured, responsible gamble. If, however, it goes the other way, the Prime Minister cannot expect the history books to be kind.
Meanwhile, the collateral damage to the relationships between our four UK governments is being minimised, not least by the politicians, conscious of the need to appear united, even if that unity is fraying at the edges. For that I am grateful. There will be plenty of time, once this is over, if it ever does end, for normal party politicking to recommence.
The last thing anyone needs right now, especially when we are all sick with worry over the future, is for our leaders to start tearing lumps out each other.
The devolved governments will soon follow England and lift some of their lockdown restrictions and the economy must be given some kind of chance to recover. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, may have waved his treasury wand again, and against all predictions, shaken billions more from the magic money tree, by extending the furlough scheme until October.
But the devil will be in the detail, and as someone who cannot make a crust from his clubs and venues, until social distancing measures are a thing of the past, a bad memory, I fully expect less than good news when we hear how furlough will be funded at the end of the month.
There are many in hospitality who share my dread, not least the thousands of employees worried about being forced on to the dole.