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| With his 200th birthday approaching, the life-saving work of Hungarian obstetrician Ignaz Semmelweis is finally getting its due (AFP Photo/ALEX HALADA) |
Vienna (AFP) - It's not an uncommon fate for a pioneering scientist: languishing unrecognised in his time before dying in obscurity. But as his 200th birthday approaches, the life-saving work of a Hungarian obstetrician is finally getting its due.
Decades
before Louis Pasteur won widespread acceptance for the germ theory of disease,
Ignac Semmelweis was battling his peers to accept what is today medical
orthodoxy -- doctors should thoroughly disinfect their hands before treating
patients.
Born on
July 1 1818, Semmelweis joined the obstetrics department of Vienna's general
hospital in 1846 and was immediately struck by the extremely high maternal
mortality rate in the wing where student doctors trained: it stood at more than
10 percent, at times going up to almost 40 percent.
By
contrast, in the neighbouring wing where midwives trained, the rate stayed
under the contemporary average of three percent.
"This
disparity troubled Semmelweis enormously and he started a thorough epidemiological
study," says Bernhard Kuenburg, president of Vienna's Semmelweis
Foundation.
In 1847,
the penny dropped when a colleague died of septicaemia after carrying out an
autopsy: Semmelweis surmised that dead bodies must hold invisible but
potentially deadly "particles".
"At
the time, medical students went directly from an autopsy to assist with a
labour without disinfecting their hands," Kuenburg told AFP.
With soap
not being enough to fix the problem, Semmelweis imposed a more rigorous regime
of hand-washing for five minutes with a harsh chlorinated lime solution.
With this
"very simple method" Semmelweis slashed the mortality rate "to
almost zero," Kuenburg says.
Fiery disposition
 |
A
commemorative plaque for pioneering scientist Ignaz Semmelweis at Vienna's
general hospital where he battled his peers to accept today's medical orthodoxy
--
doctors should thoroughly disinfect their hands before treating patients
(AFP
Photo/ALEX HALADA)
|
Fiery disposition
But instead
of plaudits, Semmelweis suffered the wrath of the grandees of Vienna's medical
fraternity and in 1849 his contract was not renewed.
"The
self-estimation of the doctors was very high back at this time. Of course they
were offended because they didn't like the idea that they were guilty of
causing this terrible mortality rate," Kuenburg says.
Moreover,
it would still be a quarter of a century before Pasteur was finally able to
prove the existence of "microbes".
Other
doctors demanded evidence, according to Kuenburg.
"They
said: 'No, Mr Semmelweis cannot be right. He cannot show us the pathogens so
something is fishy with this theory.'"
And
Semmelweis's fiery disposition and lack of tact didn't help -- he did not
shrink from calling colleagues "killers".
Towards the
end of his life his mental health deteriorated and he died in an asylum in
1865, at the age of 47.
100
deaths a day in the EU
At the end
of the 19th Century Semmelweis's reputation began to be rehabilitated after the
discoveries of Pasteur, Robert Koch and Alexandre Yersin bore out his theories.
In 1924 the
French writer Louis-Ferdinand Celine dedicated a medical thesis to him and
hailed him as a "genius".
Today he is
considered the father of modern theories of hospital hygiene and sterilisation.
 |
Bernhard
Kuenburg, president of the Semmelweis Foundation, demonstrates the use
of
disinfectants to wash hands -- medical orthodoxy today (AFP Photo/ALEX HALADA)
|
But even
though disinfecting hands is accepted as common sense for medical personnel,
the practice still isn't as systematic as it should be, according to Professor
Didier Pittet, infection control expert at the World Health Organization (WHO).
Worldwide, the
practice is only adhered to "in 50 percent of cases on average, even
though it can prevent 50 to 70 percent of hospital infections," he told
AFP.
Some 3.2
million people are affected annually by hospital-acquired infections within the
EU, resulting in 100 deaths every day.
Pittet
estimates the global figure for such deaths to be between five and eight
million year Hungary.
"Disinfecting
the hands with an alcohol solution is cheap and simple and has an immediate
impact on infection rates," including for multi-resistant organisms,
Pittet says.
But despite
this, "it's an act which isn't taken seriously enough, notably by doctors
themselves" Pittet says, adding that some seem to think worrying about
sterilising their hands is somehow beneath them.
However,
the WHO's "Clean Care is Safer Care" campaign, launched together with
19,000 hospitals worldwide in order to raise awareness of the importance of
hand sterilisation, is starting to pay off.
Following
the lead of a programme piloted by Pittet in Swiss hospitals in the 1990s,
rates of hand disinfection in Australia and certain Asian healthcare facilities
are at almost 85 percent.
"Twenty
years ago the rate of hand disinfection was only around 20 percent. Now it's
becoming one of the sexiest topics in medical literature," says Pittet.
"In a
way, it's Semmelweis's revenge."
It's not an uncommon fate for a pioneering scientist: languishing unrecognised in his time before dying in obscurity. But as his 200th birthday approaches, the life-saving work of a Hungarian obstetrician is finally getting its due https://t.co/9E6wga9N1t— AFP news agency (@AFP) June 30, 2018
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