Opinion – Esper Kallás: Inequality and epidemics

Among the diseases that have caused problems for humanity, yellow fever occupies a prominent place.

The disease’s impact was recognized long before its agent was discovered. There have been descriptions consistent with yellow fever for hundreds of years. The first outbreak in the Americas was recorded in the 17th century, this being the first human disease-causing virus described in history.

Its impact has been felt throughout history, interfering with human movements, wars and economic activities. One of the best known occurred during the construction of the Panama Canal. After completing the construction of the Suez Canal, French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps convinced investors to finance the connection between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The French enterprise was a failure. Ravaged by yellow fever and malaria, an estimated 20,000 workers lost their lives. It was the Americans who bought the shares of the bankrupt French company, obtaining the concession to build the canal, after negotiating support for the Panamanian independence movement, in resistance to the Colombian coup. The New York Times at the time described the episode as “an act of sordid conquest”.

Construction was restarted and was successful thanks to investment in research by the health department. Walter Reed, a physician and major in the US Army, based on the observations of Cuban doctor Carlos Finlay, worked with the hypothesis that the disease could be transmitted through the bite of mosquitoes. It was then that Colonel William C. Gorgas, head of sanitation, coordinated extensive work on mosquito control and water treatment in and around the labor camps, making construction possible 10 years after it began.

In recent weeks, the book “Necrópolis: Disease, Power and Capitalism in the Algodão Kingdom”, by Kathryn Olivarius, was released. cotton producer in the United States, mainly in the state of Louisiana.

The disease, which killed whites less than foreigners and “non-acclimatized” blacks, was used as an argument to try to justify racial slavery as “natural”, widening social differences. The ruling class enforced brutal rules of domination to keep the workforce under control, at a time when individual rights were still a draft, for so many people deprived of freedom.

Parallels with the Covid-19 pandemic are inevitable. The privileges of social classes with greater economic power resulted in greater access to health care and a better chance of surviving the disease.

Yellow fever also provides a connection with the discussion about vaccines. It was the need for its control, during the American work in Panama, that spurred the development of an efficient vaccine, created in 1937 by the South African Max Theiler, linked to the Rockefeller Foundation. Already administered to hundreds of millions of people, it protects against this highly lethal disease.

Brazil also played a leading role in the vaccine against yellow fever. Rio de Janeiro was the first to implement its “massive” application, in an attempt to reverse the terrible health situation that was further aggravated by the presence of the disease in the 1940s.

In the end, vaccines are effective weapons against unequal access to health. Inexpensive and easy to use, they democratize protection, helping to ward off economic and social interference.