With @adsactly I've set out to make a series about ingenious and famous Venezuelans of the 20th and 21st century. With this series I seek to highlight the talent of these people and make them known to a foreign public that may not know the infinite human resource we have in Venezuela. Venezuela is not only oil and landscape, it is also a country full of lucid, courageous and virtuous people. Today we will talk about a man who has been fundamental to universal science: the Venezuelan physician Jacinto Convit.

Jacinto Convit was born in Caracas in 1913. Since he was young he was an outstanding student, who had two great Venezuelans as professors: the great Venezuelan writer Rómulo Gallegos, to whom we will dedicate a post later, and the great master Pedro Arnal. As a good student, he liked all subjects, but excelled in scientific subjects, so he decided to enter, in 1932, the medical school of the Central University of Venezuela, one of the best universities in the country and where he obtained, in 1938, the title of Doctor of Medical Sciences. Then he traveled to the United States to specialize in dermatology.

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Among his most important individual achievements in the field of medicine is the development of a vaccine capable of preventing and curing leprosy. As we all know, leprosy is an infectious disease that manifests itself with numerous skin lesions that can lead to lack of sensitivity and deformation. Normally, leprosy patients were rejected and execrated by society, so that families saw the need to separate sick people to prevent repudiation and possible contagion.

According to Convit's biography, when he was still very young and still not graduating, visited one of those places where people suffering from leprosy were sheltered: the Cabo Blanco leprosarium. According to some historians, Cabo Blanco was an immense mansion, built and inaugurated in 1906 by the Venezuelan leader Cipriano Castro, in Vargas, a state near the capital of Venezuela. This was an imposing mansion, with large rooms, with beds lined with their respective mosquito nets and curtains. Through its corridors the sick were kept with their faces deformed, their arms amputated or thickened. As only medicine they received oil of chalmugra, which was ineffective for the treatment.

Convit and his team

Convit recounted in several interviews how the impression produced by the tragic and pitiful living conditions of the lepers led him to commit himself not only to that institution but also to the sick and to that disease. In his own words: That visit was decisive for his life. In an interview given to a Venezuelan newspaper, he confessed:

It was a profoundly painful vision. It was a very large group of patients, about 100,000. They had no treatment and were execrated, rejected by a deeply selfish society, incapable of understanding human pain. They were forcibly isolated. It was what was called compulsive isolation, where the patient and even family members suffered pressure from the health authorities. Then, at that time I felt a great desire to work with these people, to see what could be done for them and I decided to work on the medical aspects of this disease.

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Of all the confessions this doctor has given, the memories he has of the time are the most moving and shocking. For example, he shakes the case of a peasant who was tied with chains and who was handed to him by the police because he was the bearer of evil. Or the face of astonishment and disbelief of a man, with several years of imprisonment, when he discovered that he was healthy and could return to freedom. Likewise, to know that the leprosarium had its own money: coins made of copper and zinc to prevent the proliferation of the disease through the notes. All these stories corroborate the state of helplessness, mistreatment and condemnation in which the sick were found: an evident form of contempt towards them.

After that experience in Cabo Blanco and in front of this enclosure, together with José Sánchez Covisa, Martín Vegas, Juan di Prisco and other eminent dermatologists, he founds the Venezuelan Society of Dermatology and Venerology and initiates his passionate, sacrificed and constant work of finding a vaccine for leprosy. Which arrived in 1987. The doctor inoculated the tuberculosis vaccine and the bacillus Mycobacterium leprae into an armadillo, the only animal, together with the human being, that can be infected with leprosy. With this discovery he demonstrates, for the first time, that a mixture of Mycobacterium leprae with BCG produced a total lysis of the leprosy agent when injected into lepromatous patients. Subsequently, Venezuela would also be the first country to avoid endemic outbreaks of leishmaniasis, as Convit also investigated this disease, and discovered its vaccine because of its clinical resemblance to leprosy.

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We can say, then, that from his arrival at Cabo Blanco, Convit did not rest until he obtained the vaccine against leprosy, which also led him to discover the leishmaniasis vaccine. Thanks to this work, Venezuela became an anti-leprosy training centre, also the first country to close all its leprosaria. This invention earned Convit, in 1987, the Prince of Asturias Scientific and Technical Research Prize, a nomination for the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1988, and in 2002, the awarding by the Pan American Health Organization of the title "Hero of Public Health of the Americas".

Similarly, a few years ago, the foundation named Jacinto Convit announced the validation of a vaccine for the treatment of breast cancer. They stated that an interdisciplinary team was formed to continue with the cancer study carried out by this doctor. According to the announcement, this would be a vaccine that would prevent metastasis and make a reduction of the tumor. It should be noted that this vaccine is personalized, since the preparation is made from the patient's malignant cells, which means that they cannot be manufactured or marketed.

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It must be said that Jacinto Convit was not only known for his contribution to science, but also for his noble, humanistic nature in the exercise of the medical profession. A man of great vocation and without any interest to profit from his work. Those who knew him have declared that he dedicated himself to healing with care and to providing help to the sick. He offered them quality of life, as well as better conditions and opportunities to heal their illnesses. Convit died in 2014 and was 100 years old.

The feeling of belonging to a country, the pride of belonging to a group of people depends on knowing who we are and who the others are, and to what extent we all reflect on ourselves; we must know the abilities, virtues, weaknesses of its citizens and members. It also means building the country that we imagine, that we want. Many of our current conflicts or problems have to do with the way we look at ourselves. At this moment, Venezuelans are not proud of their country or their people. It would be worth remembering the valuable contribution that Venezuela has made at all levels. Jacinto Convit is a test of our people.

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I hope you enjoyed hearing about this Venezuelan character. Remember that you can vote for @adsactly as a witness and join our server in discord. See you next time with a smile. ;)

BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCE

https://www.notimerica.com/cultura/noticia-sabias-vacuna-contra-lepra-desarrollo-venezonalo-20170512092052.html
http://www.laverdad.com/zulia/52112-el-angel-de-los-leprosos.html
https://www.panorama.com.ve/espectaculos/Recordamos-con-este-perfil-al-angel-de-los-leprosos-Jacinto-Convit-a-dos-anos-de-su-muerte-20160512-0081.html
http://medicinaarteytiempo.blogspot.com/2012/10/jacinto-convit-de-cabo-blanco-la.html

Written by: @nancybriti

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