What's in a Pandemic?
April 28th 2009 08:14
Spanish 'flu in 1918
According to the World Health Organisation there are three conditions that have to be met before it can be considered a pandemic. They include: the disease being new to the population; the disease infects the human population causing serious illness and it spreads from human to human.
According to Wikipedia some of the more notable pandemics have come about after the domestication of animals. Zoonoses (disease that can be transmitted from animals to humans) such as influenza and tuberculosis first got their start this way.
During the Peloponnesian War in 430bc typhoid fever killed a quarter of the Greek population over four years.
The Black Death or bubonic plague hit western Europe in 1348 and killed 20 - 30 million Europeans in six years
The first cholera pandemic appeared between 1816 - 1826. It began in Bengal, India killing around 10,000 British troops and countless Indians.
Influenza's most famour appearance was possibly the Spanish 'flu between 1918-1919 first identified in a US army training camp. It then spread to become a world wide pandemic that was quick and deadly and left some 50 million dead in its wake.
AIDS and HIV first reared its ugly head in 1969 and is currently a pandemic with 25% of the African population infected. Then there is SARS, bird 'flu, horse 'flu etc. etc. when considering modern day pandemics.
Whether swine 'flu becomes another in a long, long list of pandemical (is that a word?) viruses or just a media-related furore remains to be seen. It does show how fragile, yet resilient the human race is and has been.
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Picture sourced from www.survivalhomestead.com
Information sourced from Wikipedia
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Comment by Donny
Comment by Samantha Elley
Food Journo
The Sandwich Shak
Vintage Foodie
Little House among the Canefields
I don't normally do 'newsy' items as this blog is dedicated to food history, however, I was interested in finding out what a pandemic was and realised it had quite a history behind it.
I only used wiki because this was a highlight piece, not really indepth, for those who wanted to know the definition of a pandemic, as I did. It does source the world health organisation as mentioned above.
Who knows how this 'flu will play out.
Sam