Elisha S. Tikasingh
Professor Leslie Spence died May 13, 2021 in Toronto, Canada, aged 98.
He was a former director of the Trinidad Regional Virus Laboratory (TRVL) on Jamaica Boulevard, Federation Park. The TRVL was later replaced by the Caribbean Epidemology Centre (Carec), then the Caribbean Public Health Agency (Carpha). He also convinced the Ministry of Health to start its own diagnostic lab, currently called the Trinidad and Tobago Public Health Laboratory.
As TRVL's director he introduced tissue culture systems which allowed him to isolate respiratory and enteric viruses (viruses of the intestines). He made this facility available to the doctors in the hospitals of TT. Within a few years, the overwhelming number of specimens he received for diagnostic work made him recommend to the Ministry of Health to open its own diagnostic virus laboratory (DVL). He also agreed to supervise the work of the DVL without remuneration until a director of the unit could be appointed. He even seconded one of his own technicians, Harold Drysdale for the technical work. Today, the DVL has morphed into the TT Public Health Laboratory.
Leslie Spence was born in St Vincent, West Indies in 1922. He received his early education in St Vincent and Trinidad. He graduated in medicine from the University of Bristol, England in 1950. Dr Spence studied Tropical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1950-51.
On his return to the Caribbean in 1951, he accepted an appointment in the medical service and worked at the general hospital in Port of Spain and later took up an appointment as medical officer in Sangre Grande.
In 1953, he married Phyllis Haddaway. They had two daughters, Helen and Michele. His elder daughter, Helen passed away in 1999, and wife Phyllis in April 2020.
In 1954 he was seconded by the TT Health Department to be an epidemiologist at the Trinidad Regional Virus Laboratory. In 1955-57 Spence received a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation and studied virology at their laboratory in New York and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where he earned a diploma in bacteriology.
He returned to Trinidad becoming virologist at TRVL and became director when the first director, Dr Wilbur Downs, left in 1961.
The TRVL was established by the government jointly with the Rockefeller Foundation in December 1952. Later, other Caribbean territories and the UK's Department of Overseas Development helped fund the Laboratory. During his stay at TRVL, Spence worked with his colleagues to make the TRVL an internationally renowned institution. Scholars from various parts of the world came to study techniques developed at TRVL.
Pioneering work in isolating polio
At TRVL, Spence isolated and described eight arboviruses (viruses transmitted by insects, ticks and mites to man and animals) which were then new to science. He also participated in the isolation of other viruses which affected humans and animals such as yellow fever, dengue, Mayaro, St Louis encephalitis,
