Med­ical pro­fes­sion­als on the front­lines of the COVID-19 bat­tle in this coun­try should to­day pause just long enough to draw in­spi­ra­tion from a na­tion­al hero whose pi­o­neer­ing work dur­ing an­oth­er pan­dem­ic earned in­ter­na­tion­al ac­claim.

Pro­fes­sor Courte­nay Fe­lix Bartholomew, a physi­cian and med­ical re­searcher died yes­ter­day at age 89, leav­ing be­hind a body of work that con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to ad­vances in the di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment of the hu­man im­mun­od­e­fi­cien­cy virus (HIV) which caus­es ac­quired im­mun­od­e­fi­cien­cy syn­drome (Aids).

Not on­ly did he di­ag­nose the first case of Aids in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, but as founder and di­rec­tor of the Med­ical Re­search Foun­da­tion of T&T (MRFTT), Prof Bartholomew led HIV vac­cine tri­als and re­search.

He was al­so a mem­ber of the World Aids Foun­da­tion Sci­en­tif­ic Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee and pro­mot­ed pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion on Aids.

Prof Bartholomew was an as­so­ciate of Dr Luc Mon­tag­nier who re­ceived the No­bel Prize in Phys­i­ol­o­gy in 1983 for iden­ti­fy­ing the virus that caus­es Aids and then again in 2008, for his ef­forts in the fight against HIV and Aids.

As is now the case with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, there were many un­knowns in the ear­ly 1980s, when rare types of pneu­mo­nia, can­cer, and oth­er ill­ness­es were be­ing re­port­ed to doc­tors.

The glob­al com­mu­ni­ty is be­gin­ning to se­ri­ous­ly con­tem­plate an Aids‐free gen­er­a­tion for the first time in three decades but when Prof Batholomew and his col­leagues em­barked on their ground­break­ing work there was a lot of fear and su­per­sti­tion sur­round­ing the dis­ease.

Ear­ly on Aids was un­for­tu­nate­ly la­belled a “gay plague” and it was against that back­drop of stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion that Prof Bartholomew start­ed his life­sav­ing re­search.

At that time he had al­ready gained recog­ni­tion for his re­search on scor­pi­on sting ven­om, acute pan­cre­ati­tis and He­pati­tis A and B in T&T. Be­fore that, he was the first lo­cal physi­cian to re­ceive mem­ber­ship of the Roy­al Col­lege of Physi­cians, Lon­don with­out ex­am­i­na­tion.

Born and raised in Port-of-Spain, he at­tend­ed Nel­son Street Boys’ RC School and St Mary’s Col­lege. His path to suc­cess was nei­ther easy nor swift but was the re­sult of ar­du­ous work and ded­i­ca­tion to his pro­fes­sion.

In recog­ni­tion of his many achieve­ments, Prof Bartholomew won this coun­try's sec­ond-high­est award, the Cha­co­nia Gold Medal, in 1975, then the na­tion’s high­est award, the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ORTT), in 2017.

His ex­tra­or­di­nary life and work should serve as a time­ly re­minder to this coun­try, now in the throes of a pub­lic health cri­sis, that there is the ca­pac­i­ty with­in us to beat this pan­dem­ic. How­ev­er, it re­quires ris­ing above the myths and mis­in­for­ma­tion which was al­so a chal­lenge when Prof Bartholomew was on the front­lines of that oth­er pan­dem­ic in the 1980s.

Among the many chal­lenges this time around, the good news about Chi­na’s Sinopharm vac­cine get­ting World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) ap­proval has been over­shad­owed by dis­in­for­ma­tion about its safe­ty and ef­fec­tive­ness.

We all need to fol­low the ex­am­ple of the late Prof Bartholomew, stand on the side of sci­ence, and re­ject all the base­less an­ti-vac­cine spec­u­la­tion.

May his life and work in­spire and mo­ti­vate our front­line health work­ers to de­feat the pan­dem­ic.