World needs pioneers, thinkers in war on virus

IN 2020, we all know the importance of washing hands and its role in preventing disease.

In 1846 however, Ignaz Semmelweis, the Hungarian doctor who first theorised the importance and preventative effects of washing hands made enemies and lost his job.

Eventually the pioneer was committed to a mental institution where he died in 1865 at the age of 47.

Now, 174 years later, his story is a message to the world that critical thinkers and social entrepreneurs who challenge the norm need to be encouraged.

Semmelweis ushered in the “golden age of the physician-scientist” when doctors were required to have scientific knowledge.

In 1846, he arrived at the maternity clinic at the General Hospital in Vienna. He immediately started collecting data on the high rate of women dying of childbed fever.

One maternity ward staffed only by doctors and medical students had a death rate of close to five times more than the second maternity ward which was staffed by nurses.

He noted that doctors performed autopsies while nurses did not.

He theorised that particles present on the hands of doctors after the autopsies, infected the women they attended to during childbirth.

He ordered the medical staff to clean their hands and instruments with a chlorine solution and not just soap. As a result, death rates in the maternity clinic fell dramatically.

However, no one celebrated this life-saving discovery. Semmelweis’s theory was interpreted as an attack on doctors and he made enemies.

Doctors all around Europe refuted his claims.

They did not wash their hands and people died as a consequence.

Pioneers like Semmelweis frequently share similar fates due to their seemingly disruptive ideas and passionate views.

But their ideas change society. Henry Ford and Steve Jobs, whose ideas were seen as threats to their respective industries, reimagined and changed the order of things in ways that still impact our lives today.

The destruction of colonial and apartheid regimes in South Africa, Africa, and the US, for example, led to an undeniably positive change in the lives of many.

There is now a wealth of sportsmen, scientists, and innovative ideas designed to help others irrespective of race, religion or creed that could not have been brought forward if things had stayed the same.

In a more economic sense, Harvard Business Review highlights how companies such as Gucci stayed relevant in the marketplace and grew sales by 136%.

The fashion giant created a shadow board of young employees from all parts of the business to work in association with senior board members.

Companies such as Prada, however, witnessed a decline in sales in the same period by trying to retain the status quo. Chief executive Patrizio Bertelli later acknowledged: “We made a mistake.”

History shows that innovation, a break away from the existing order, has increased profits, led to better quality of life, or even saved lives.

It is undeniable that we are all ‘ideaphobes’ in that we all, to a certain degree, resist and fear change or new ideas. Human beings are by nature creatures of habit.

However, it is in times of crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, that the seemingly alternative, disruptive or different needs to be at least considered or explored for all to benefit.

If we do this we will never repeat the mistake made by doctors in Semmelweis’s time of judging his discovery to be inconsequential.

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