The Spanish flu pandemic, caused by the H1N1 influenza virus, is recognised as the most severe in human history. It killed more people in a year than those who were killed in four years of World War I.
The so-called Spanish flu pandemic, caused by the H1N1 influenza virus, is recognised as the most severe in human history. The US Center for Disease Control estimates that 500 million people were infected across the globe. Ten percent of them would die.
Spreading along shipping and rail lines, the pandemic affected North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Brazil and the South Pacific, aided by wartime troop movements. There was no vaccine against it nor antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections, forcing governments to encourage isolation and quarantine, to limit public gatherings, and to urge good personal hygiene and the use of sanitisers, but this was not applied uniformly.
Three-hundred thousand people died in Brazil, including the president, 250 000 in Britain, more than 400 000 in France. Russia, in the grip of a civil war, is estimated to have lost as many as 2.7 million of its citizens. In Africa, Gold Coast lost 100 000 people. The future Haile Selassie, emperor-to-be of Ethiopia, survived but many of his subjects did not. In Addis Ababa, the capital, 10 000 residents perished. South Africa lost some 350 000 of its population, including, possibly, its first prime minister, Louis Botha. The isolated island of St Helena on the other hand did not record a single infection.
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