It began after a bad oil spill that took place in 1969 off the coast of California. A year later, the first annual Earth Day was celebrated to demonstrate universal support for environmental protection and responsible stewardship of the planet and its inhabitants.

Since then, public and official awareness of the negative impacts of human activity – such as air and water pollution – have been raised to a level where concrete action is being demanded to mitigate those effects and heal the ills that have been inflicted on our world.

On this, the fiftieth anniversary of the annual celebration, it is strikingly ironic that mankind is currently grappling with its own health crisis with the coronavirus outbreak.

The occasion may represent an opportunity to reflect on how fragile our biological and environmental systems truly are, and the need for proper care and implementation of procedures that will ensure the optimal health of both the large and small on the only home we have, our precious planet Earth.

While science has figured out a lot in terms of what the right things to do are for improving the health of our environment, it is still struggling to establish ways to contain and ultimately defeat the COVID-19 virus in time to avoid catastrophic loss of human lives.

Similarly, the many factors affecting our environmental health demand that immediate and meaningful measures must be taken as soon as possible.

Let us become purveyors of the cure rather than remain the virus itself.