The unsung hero who invented 2 vaccines

There are heroes who wear capes. They make million dollar movies. Then there are real heroes who save real lives. Sadly, they are forgotten.

As the epidemic is showing is true darker side with fullest intensity, thousands of citizens and medical professionals have stepped up to become heroes to do what it takes to protect lives. After the epidemic subsides, these heroes will go nameless and into oblivion — for they stepped up not for their personal glory, but because that is what true humanity is made of. To stand up and protect.

A few weeks back the Maharashtra state owned bio-pharma corporation Haffkine Institute got a green signal to start production of Covaxin, a vaccine to fight the Covid-19. And this news sparked this episode of Masala History by Siva. And I wont be surprised that you will be drawing parallels from this story with what is happening today around us in India.

So who is this Mr. Haffkine?

We have always celebrated forgotten heroes. And today we will add one more to the list. A zoologist, who invented vaccines for not one but two horrendous epidemics and saved millions of lives. Someone who lived & served in India. Someone who was defamed and forgotten. But why are we surprised?

The hero of our story Waldemar Haffkine was born in the erstwhile Russian Empire, modern day Ukraine, in 1860 CE. He was born a Jew, something that will come in the way of his life time and again. When Haffkine graduated in zoology from the University of Odessa in 1884 CE, his was to be barred from taking up a professorship there because he was a Jew. This was when Russian Empire was cracking down on Jews via pogroms. He was allowed to emigrate and so in 1888 CE, Haffkine left his home country and found his way first to a short-lived teaching job in Geneva and then to Paris, where he took a position as an assistant librarian at the Louis Pasteur institute — then the world’s leading centre of bacteriology research.

Haffkine focused his research on developing a cholera vaccine, and produced an attenuated form of the bacterium. To gain attention and to provide credibility for his research, on 18 July 1892, Haffkine performed the first human test on himself. Sadly, his research was not accepted by his senior colleagues, including Pasteur and so no official European medical commission would support it further. This situation forced Haffkine to look at India. Lord Duffrein, a former Viceroy of India advised Haffkine to look at Bengal for continuing his tests and clinical trials. He successfully inoculated 23000 people in Bengal inspite of extremely tough circumstances. The vaccines required 2 doses and very often people would be untraceable for their second dose!! Followed by the success at Bengal, he was invited to Assam, where he continued to inoculate tea plantation workers successfully. Even though the mortality issues weren’t fully solved, it was Haffkine’s cholera vaccine that still ended up saving several thousand people.

In 1894 however another pandemic would start that would make Haffkine produce yet another vaccine. Similar to today, the plague of 1894 originated in Yunnan, China and quickly spread all over. In less than 2 years, Bombay was most affected given the large slums. Again, as with today, the then government run by British underplayed the severity of the outbreak, keen to keep a key port city open for business.

Unable to ignore the quantum of death, the Governor reached out to Haffkine. Waldemar Haffkine moved to Parel and worked tirelessly out of a small office with non-existent help. He was using the same approach he had devised for the new treatment of cholera and prep a single-injection vaccine.
In December, Haffkine successfully inoculated rabbits against an attack of plague. On 10 January 1897, Haffkine injected himself with 10cc of his preparation — 3 times the dose required for an adult. He experienced a severe fever but recovered after few days. When there was plague outbreak in the local Byculla prison, Haffkine carried out tests and proved his vaccine worked.

Within a year, several lakhs of people were inoculated using Haffkine’s vaccine, saving millions of lives. In 1901, Haffkine was knighted by Queen Victoria and he was appointed Director-in-chief of the Plague Research Laboratory at Government House in Parel, Bombay.

And then things went south.

In March 1902, in the village of Mulkowal in Punjab, 19 people died from tetanus after being inoculated with Haffkine’s vaccine.All the evidence appeared to point to a fatal contamination of bottle at the Parel lab. A government investigation was launched. And as with vindictive investigations, the fact that Haffkine wasn’t a medical professional and that he was a Jew went against him. He was wrongly convicted of negligence (just because used models that British scentists weren’t familiar with), disgraced, fired and sent away from India. And even while this public shaming of Haffkine was happening, two years after Haffkine was suspended, the plague reached its peak in India, killing 1.2 million+. Haffkine’s vaccine was the main line of defence — In the first 25 years of the 20th century, 26 million+ people were vaccinated with Haffkine’s anti-plague vaccine, that resulted in saving millions of lives.

Professor Simpson of King’s College and Nobel Prize winner Ronald Ross started a campaign for Haffkine’s redemption. They were able to successfully argue that the contamination of the bottle happened because of an assistant’s error and not because of Haffkine’s methodology. This was also critical because it was important to provide public trust on the vaccine preparation. Finally in November 1907, Haffkine was exonerated and he was reappointed as Director of Calcutta biological Laboratory, where he happily worked for another 8 years. But his redemption was incomplete — he was barred from carrying out any trials, limiting him to theoretical research.

Haffkine made not one but two viable vaccines in two-room labs with a very small team, in the middle of epidemics. In 1925, five years before his death, some of his supporters lobbied the British Indian government to rename the Parel lab ‘The Haffkine Institute’. The government agreed, and the name remains to this day. Lets hope the Haffkine Institute continues to live the legacy of its founder, especially in these trying times.

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