Prof Leslie Spence, founder of Trinidad and Tobago's Public Health Lab, dies at 98

Elisha S. Tikasingh

Professor Leslie Spence died on 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 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, Venezuelan equine encephalitis and eastern equine encephalitis.

He was a pioneer in setting up the tissue culture systems in Trinidad which were used to isolate respiratory viruses such as influenza and respiratory syncytial, and enteric viruses such as polio, ECHO and Coxsackievirus, the causative agents of much morbidity in TT.

Indeed, in many epidemics of respiratory diseases in Trinidad he was able to isolate the causative agents for the very first time thus bringing the TRVL on par with other laboratories in developed countries.

By 1962, the TRVL had become a unit of the Department of Microbiology, UWI, but continued to do limited diagnostic work on respiratory and enteric viruses for TT.

However, this service was detracting from what was supposed to be a regional research laboratory, so Spence recommended to the Government that they should develop their own diagnostic facilities to which they agreed. Thus the Diagnostic Virus Laboratory (DVL) was born in 1963 in TRVL’s building and shared its common facilities. Spence supervised the lone technician at DVL that time and acted as its director until Dr W. Swanston was appointed the director in 1965.

It was the sound foundation laid by Spence at DVL which, although he was no longer here, was able to isolate the Polio Type I virus in 1970. The early notification of the isolate to the Ministry of Health allowed the government to undertake a massive vaccination programme during the epidemic of 1971-1972.

Awarded Chaconia Medal (silver)

Spence published many scientific papers in internationally peer-reviewed journals, 61 of which were based on his work in virology at the TRVL.

In 1962, he was appointed director of the Trinidad Regional Virus Laboratory and senior lecturer in microbiology at UWI. Subsequently, he was appointed to a personal chair in virology at UWI.

In 1968, he migrated to Canada and was appointed Prof of Microbiology at McGill University in Montreal. In 1972, he was appointed Prof of Microbiology at the University of Toronto and Microbiologist at the Toronto General Hospital.

In 1983, he was appointed chairman of the Department of Microbiology of the University of Toronto and microbiologist in chief of the Toronto General Hospital and in 1988 he became Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Toronto.

Spence received an award for distinction in medical microbiology from the Canadian Association of Medical Microbiology in 1999. In 2009, he was awarded the Chaconia Medal (silver) by the President of TT, Prof George Maxwell Richards.

Spence served as a consultant to the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health of the United States and was a member of the American Committee on Arboviruses and of various committees of the Pan American Health Organisation (World Health Organization).

He was chairman of the Canadian Medical Research Council's Grant Committee for Microbiology and Infectious Diseases from 1983-1986 and sat on a number of committees of health and welfare in Canada and the Ontario government. His arbovirus work, which included the description of several new viruses isolated at the TRVL led to his appointment as director of the Canadian National Arbovirus Reference Service from its inception in 1972 until 1988. His research included studies on arboviruses, respiratory viruses and enteroviruses including polio viruses. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists of England.

He leaves to mourn his younger daughter Michele, and three grandchildren, all of whom live in Toronto.