Marvel Gordon was a quiet and self-assured young woman whose sharp mind gave comfort with unique solutions. She was excellent in her communications strategies for the Ministry of Youth and Culture while I was minister in charge. She was like a daughter to me and we remained in touch after I left the ministry. I was truly proud of her strides as she was of mine.

Marvel went on to become a respected manager at the international outsourcing firm Hinduja Global Solutions (HGS). She was doing well for herself and had just completed the purchase of a housing lot. There was nothing I did that she didn’t call or text to say, “’m rooting for you and you know you have my support…”

As a manager at HGS, Marvel and her team were the enforcers behind the company’s programme to vaccinate its approximately 4,200 plus personnel. Amidst her dedication, last week I received the devastating news from her next of kin that @marvy_boo died at hospital from complications of COVID-19. She was 30 years old.

Ironically, Marvel never went to take the COVID-19 vaccine. As regrettable as this is, she was not unique in choosing not to be immunised against COVID-19, as many Jamaicans have made the same decision in spite of the rapid community spread. Now at a 46.1 per cent infection rate, 59,088 Jamaicans have reportedly contracted the virus and more than 1,342 of them have died.

Over the last couple of weeks I have sought to find out why so many people are opposed to taking the COVID-19 vaccine and have been shocked at the levels of misinformation being transmitted through social media and other channels which have led to a rise to an unyielding ‘anti-vax narrative’.

“Mi nah tek it cause it going to alter my DNA…”

“A whole heap of people who have taken the vaccine are dying…”

“It makes no sense to take it because I can still catch COVID anyway…”

“COVID cyaanh kill me. Once I eat healthy and boost my immune system I will be fine…”

“You can gwaan, it’s the micro-chip they are injecting into us which is the mark of the beast…”

“Mi fraid!”

“MP, it’s an experimental drug…”

Experimental smallpox vaccine

During the 18th century the smallpox disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans each year, including five sitting monarchs, and was responsible for a third of all blindness and other forms of disfigurations. Over 80 per cent of infected children died from the disease.

In 1768 Catherine the Great, empress and the longest-ruling female leader of Russia, took action because she feared for the safety of her son and the Russian people. The earliest method to prevent smallpox was an invention called inoculation, which worked by slicing two or three times into a patient’s arm and scraping pus from a patient with mild smallpox into the open wound.

As a known advocate of science and modernity, Catherine invited Dr Thomas Dimsdale from Scotland to perform the controversial inoculation on herself first to ensure the procedure was safe before she decided to have her entire empire inoculated.

Catherine is quoted as saying, “My objective was, through my example, to save from death the multitude of my subjects who, not knowing the value of this technique, and frightened of it, were left in danger.” By 1800, approximately two million Russians had been inoculated. (Tatler 2021)

As one of history’s most lethal diseases, it is estimated that smallpox was responsible for 300-500 million deaths globally between the late 1800s to the early 1970s. Subsequently, The World Health Organization (WHO) created and conducted the Smallpox Eradication Programme — an intense global immunisation and surveillance plan between 1966 to 1977, which led to the organisation declaring the eradication of the disease in 1980. (‘Small Pox: The Death of a Disease’, Dr Donald Henderson, 2009)

Ja’s pioneering immunisation coverage

Between the early 1900s to the mid 1960s Jamaica enforced a mandatory law for all citizens to be vaccinated against smallpox (Dr Deanna Ashley 2021). But even with these immunisation milestones we were not very successful as the general life expectancy at birth in Jamaica was 38 years and infant mortality was 100-200 per 1,000 live births up to the 1940s. Diseases such as tuberculosis, measles, whooping cough, polio, diphtheria, tetanus as well as cholera, yellow fever, influenza, and pneumonia were the leading cause of death. These deaths were all preventable.

Despite polio outbreaks in 1957, 1960, and 1964 there was no overt polio immunisation policy nor programme designed to target and systematically protect very young children. It was not until the period between 1975 and 1979 that Jamaica began its school immunisation programmes with special attention on the rubella vaccination for girls and established a national surveillance system for the monitoring of vaccine preventable diseases. This was in tandem with the WHO Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) for the English-speaking Caribbean with the first group of vaccines diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, BCG and polio. Measles was introduced in 1980.

On May 31, 1982 the virology laboratory at The University of the West Indies confirmed that the type 1 polio virus was responsible for cases of acute flaccid paralytic illness in St James. It was Jamaica’s fourth polio outbreak. However, on June 3, 1982, Jamaica was able to aggressively roll out a massive immunisation campaign using an oral polio vaccine targeting all individuals under 30 years of age, with special priority for children up to 14 years. So targeted was this campaign in the first phase that by June 30, 1982, 65 per cent of the total population received one dose. Another 641,000 doses were given six weeks later to children aged up to 14 years, a coverage of approximately 70 per cent in this age group. (Ashley & Bernal 1985)

The mass campaign was followed by increased efforts, through maternal and child health clinics, special outreach activities, and the school health programme to fully immunise children under 10 years with three doses of oral polio vaccine during the subsequent 18 months, and to give all newborns three doses of this vaccine by the age of one year in a continuing programme (shley & Bernal 1985).

Recognising that the 1982 epidemic could have been prevented by a competent immunisation programme of activities and complementary integrated routine follow-ups into the country’s maternal and child health clinic services, Jamaica enacted legislation in 1985 for the compulsory immunisation of all children.

These pioneering immunisation and courageous public health efforts, along with others from neighbouring Caribbean countries, led to the ultimate eradication of polio and measles from the region in the 1990s. Now our life expectancy in Jamaica is 74 years, and the infant mortality rate is 11.9 deaths per 1,000 live births (statista.com).

So how did our public health specialists such as Doctors Deanna Ashley, Winty Davidson and Christine Moodie, just to name a few, achieve this level success during that period? I spoke to Dr Ashley, who told me, “behaviour change does not occur overnight, it took Jamaica a solid three years of work towards compulsory immunisation…”

(to be continued)

Lisa Hanna is Member of Parliament for St Ann South Eastern, People’s National Party spokesperson on foreign affairs and foreign trade, and a former Cabinet member.