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Summary
- The mightiest of countries last year were brought to their knees by the Coronavirus.
- The UK is planning to make vaccine mandatory for all its healthcare workers.
- Women have played an exemplary role in leading UK’s healthcare systems in waging war against the virus.
The passing year had been an overwhelming year for medical science and healthcare. As the mightiest of countries were brought to their knees by the Covid-19 pandemic, healthcare systems were inundated with the kind of stress it has never seen in recent history.
The world pinned all its hopes on doctors, medicine scientists and healthcare workers to fight against the deadly Covid-19 pandemic. Vaccines and new medicines became the only things that held out hope. The government has now announced its plans of making the vaccine mandatory for all healthcare professionals, Nadhim Zahawi, UK’s vaccine minister, said. He added there were precedents to this as surgeons have got inoculated for hepatitis B, and hence the government was thinking on similar lines.
Also read: UK Government Borrowing Hits Second-Highest April On Record
Women and UK’s healthcare systems
Women have played an exemplary role in leading UK’s healthcare systems in waging war against the virus. And as the UK has gradually opened up its economy after a successful vaccination drive, it would be a good time to look at the women at the helm of things in the healthcare sector in the country.
Dame Sue Hill, England’s chief scientific officer, leads a team of 50,000 healthcare scientists working with the NHS and other associated bodies. Hill is also NHS’ senior responsible officer (SRO) for its Genomics Programme. The programme has been instrumental in the 100,000 Genomes Project, which ensured that healthcare scientists from NHS were involved in the programme.
The project laid the foundation for NHS’ Genomic Medicine Service that made genomic testing available to NHS’ patients from 2019 onwards. Under Hill’s leadership, the UK became the first country that applied at scale to the entire genome sequencing in direct healthcare and has also provided access to a better variety of genomic data and de-identified clinical data for research purposes.
Women have been the backbone of the NHS. They account for over three quarters of its workforce in the UK. Dr Ruth May is England’s chief nursing officer as well as NHS’s national director. Midwives and nurses account for around 320,000 of its staff out of a total strength of 1.5 million. The NHS is looking to recruit an additional 40,000 nurses in the next five years.
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Also read: COVID-19 Vaccines’ Global Roll-Out A Tough Nut to Crack
May’s mandate is to ensure that allied health professions, nurses, and midwives have the opportunity to develop and chart their careers like her. She served as chief executive to two NHS Trusts during her tenure. NHS would also be required to increase diversity and support better mental health standards in workplaces.
When history on the pandemic is chronicled, the Oxford’s Jenner Institute’s contribution in creating a vaccine under the leadership of Prof. Sarah Gilbert would be a crucial chapter. Gilbert has been working to develop vaccines for several years. She has also worked on vaccines for Ebola and Malaria before the Covid-19 vaccine.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine activates the immune system when injected. It is done through the spike protein being delivered to body cells after inoculation. Before the pandemic broke out, she was already working on developing the MERS coronavirus vaccine and employed a similar procedure to generate the necessary immune response.
Moderna’s mRna vaccine was developed by another female scientist Dr Kizzmekia Corbett along with Dr Barney Graham. Corbett has expertise in immunology and microbiology. In 2014, she had joined the NIH's Vaccine Research Centre.
Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2020 were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry. They were recognised for their work in the field of CRISPR-Cas9 technology. The technology enables the undertaking of programmable gene editing.
The technology is also known as genetic scissors allowing to cut DNA with precision. The CRISPR technology can be used to grow resilient crops and plants, in eliminating diseases, eradicating pathogens, and new cancer treatments.
