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Jacinto Convit
The doctor of hope
At 92 he continues working tirelessly at the Biomedicine Institute, firmly convinced that, despite his age, he still has a great deal to offer mankind
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He was a landmark in the field of epidemiology in Venezuela. His contributions to science won him a nomination to the Medicine Nobel Prize (Photo:Nicola Rocco)
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ROBERTO GIUSTI EL UNIVERSAL
 For seven years, Convit lived with the lepers, patients who were twice doomed: to total segregation and mandatory hospitalization, and to the effects of a disease for which there was no cure at the time. Two memories from those days are seared in his brain. One, that of a farmer in chains, brought in by the police because he had leprosy. The other, the look of utter disbelief on the face of a man who, after several years of being locked up, found out that he was healthy and would regain his freedom. The compassion the young doctor felt, however, prompted him to action, and he set about organizing a group of eight doctors, six Venezuelans and two Italians, who would endeavor to find a cure for the disease. The first thing they did was try to improve Chaulmoogra oil, a product obtained from an Asian tree and the only treatment available at the time, with meager results. After several years of research, however they found that a combination of sulfone and clofazimine were effective for keeping the disease under control. The first outcome of this discovery was to put an end to compulsory isolation and, thus, leper colonies. Venezuela thus became the first country in the world to shut down these establishments. In 1947, following 10 years of courtship, he married a young woman of Italian descent, Rafaela Martota, with whom he had four sons: Francisco, Oscar, Antonio and Rafael, the last two twins who are also doctors like their father. In the 1960s, at a meeting of the World Health Organization (WHO) in London, he presented a report on the results of his research. This report was included in a paper titled Therapy of Leprosy, coauthored by him and other specialists from around the world, and became the basis for the polychemotherapy program launched by the WHO in countries where the disease was endemic. The outstanding achievement of Convit and his team, however, was the development of two vaccination models for controlling leprosy and leishmaniasis. In the case of the latter disease, the treatment turned out to be so effective that 95% of cases are cured, with no side effects. Thanks to the contribution of American researcher Elenora Stors, who discovered leprosy in one type of armadillo in the United States, Convit inoculated the animals with the leprosy bacillus to obtain Mycobacterium leprae that, once mixed with BCG (tuberculosis vaccine), became a vaccine. In 1988 he was nominated for a Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery. The year before he had received the Prince of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research, one among the many that he has received throughout a career that has spanned close to 70 years. And there, in his lab at the Biomedicine Institute, he continues working tirelessly, firmly convinced that, despite his age, he still has a great deal to offer mankind. Translated by Francine Jacome |
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