From Mahatma Gandhi’s views on vaccination to the use of children as a source of live vaccines, Dr Sajjan Singh Yadav’s new book maps several such noteworthy moments in India’s journey to emerge as a global vaccine superpower of modern times.
Although the subject of the book is academic in nature, it is far from being a dry collection of facts and figures. The research is in-depth and the narrative is well structured and novelesque. Anecdotes complement historical events, and the angst and panic that has ravaged the country during outbreaks of epidemics such as smallpox, plague, cholera, polio and Covid-19 come through eloquently. So does the sense of triumph in making breakthroughs to find cures for these diseases, making the book read-worthy also for people beyond scholars and policymakers in the field.
Dr Yadav takes the readers back to the beginnings of the coronavirus pandemic—to a tense WHO office in China on New Year’s Eve in 2019 after the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission detected a cluster of cases of pneumonia of an unknown nature—painting, retrospectively, a terrifying picture of a world immersed in celebrations, unaware of what awaited them.
The tale of the struggle of the researchers to trace the route of the coronavirus into the human community is told with gripping fervour. From the elusive search for patient zero to the futile efforts and impediments faced by scientists to trace the actual mode of transmission of the virus, Dr Yadav captures the various crests and troughs of India’s war against Covid-19 in a captivating manner. He explores and enlists the various theories and conspiracies around the possible ways the virus invaded the human population, including the assumption that the virus could have escaped from a laboratory or that it was part of a more sinister ploy.
Stories from a pre-vaccine India going back to the seventh century, when people practised various ways of acquiring immunity, make for an interesting read. For instance, oral consumption of snake venom was considered an effective method to deal with snake bites, a toxin immunity method that the western world discovered many centuries later.
Also discussed at length is India’s vaccine outreach programme—Vaccine Maitri—that established the credibility of India as a reliable vaccine producer. Dr Yadav captures how Vaccine Maitri resulted in the western world beginning to see India as a counterbalancing force to the growing influence of China in the region and the emergence of new geopolitics. Social impediments faced during inoculation drives in India, including administrative complacency and vaccine hesitancy among people are addressed.
With people’s renewed awareness about vaccines in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, the book is certainly a topical read, and the author’s background as a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare only helps.