100 YEAR HISTORY CHALLENGE: THE 1918 SPANISH FLU EPIDEMIC IN SOUTH AFRICA
(Photo credit: Business Day)
South Africa was the fifth hardest hit country in the world. To put this in context - Almost as many South Africans died from the 1918 flu as did Americans.
• Almost 500 000 people died from the flu epidemic in South Africa.
• Between 1,6 to 3 million people out of a population of almost 7 million were affected by the flu
• Between 2 to 4 percent of the population died.
• About 140 000 people died in seven weeks from September - October 1918
• The mining town of Kimberley lost almost 9 percent of its population
The historian Professor Howard Phillips calls the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918 - "The single most devastating episode in South Africa's demographic history..." Worldwide it is estimated that almost 20 million people died. While the exact cause of the infection remains uncertain, its effects were not. In South Africa, it is estimated that almost half a million people died. One wonders how this massive loss of life has impacted on South Africa's later history.
Exact figures are difficult to determine in South Africa, as legislation did not provide for the recording of the death toll among the black population - especially those living in rural areas. The figures can be assumed to have been even less reliable during the crisis brought on by the epidemic in the last quarter of 1918, when even the recording of deaths among whites in urban areas was incomplete.
Historians had to rely on an estimate extrapolated from figures supplied by the government-appointed Influenza Epidemic Commission and the figures released for the May 1921 census.
The Union of South Africa Government concluded that this shortfall in the 1921 census was due to the enormous mortality during the flu epidemic. The long-term effects of this killer epidemic on the development of South African society has indeed been massive.
Sources: Business Day, 22 August 2017 and www.health24.com
A very interesting article, we all know about the flu epidemic but very few know exactly how bad it was.
Congratulations @sea-cottage! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on any badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about SteemitBoard, click here
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPThank you for the upvote!
My great-grandparents were undertakers for the British military in Cape Town (Human and Pitt), I remember from my great aunt Nellie's memoirs where she said they would go down the road and have to collect the bodies on the side of the road. None of them died from the Spanish Flu, but they did know a lady who worked herself to exhaustion and contracted the disease and died. They would hold a little service for each person they buried.
Thanks for the upvote. Great personal connection on your side to something that happened 100 years ago!