1918 Influenza Pandemic - South Africa: Survivors

The 1918 flu pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus. It infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—three to five percent of the world's population—making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.

Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the pandemic's geographic origin.It was implicated in the outbreak of encephalitis lethargica in the 1920s.

Please add to this project any profiles of those who suffered but survived the' Spanish Flu' pandemic of 1918 in South Africa. Profiles from elsewhere in Africa should be added here:

http://www.geni.com/projects/1918-lnfluenza-Pandemic-Africa-Survivors/24237

To participate in any project

- you do need to first be a collaborator - so please join the project using the request link under "actions" at the top right of the page. Visit Geni Wikitext, Unicode and images which gives a great deal of assistance. See the discussion Project Help: How to add Text to a Project - Starter Kit to get you going!

How to add a link is explained in the document - Adding links to Geni profiles in projects.

See also

http://www.geni.com/projects/Working-with-Projects/12487 http://www.geni.com/projects/Working-with-projects-Step-by-Step/18185

The "Spanish Flu" in Africa

In South Africa, case-fatality rates were >2× higher for “Blacks, Indians, and Coloureds” (influenza cases 2,162,152, deaths 127,745, case-fatality rate 5.9%) than for “Whites” (influenza cases 454,653, deaths 11,726, case-fatality rate 2.6%) (26); and the influenza-associated mortality rate was >30× higher for Kimberley diamond miners (influenza deaths 2,564, overall mortality rate 22.4%) (26) than for Rand gold miners (influenza cases 61,000, deaths 1,147, case-fatality rate 1.9%, overall mortality rate 0.6%) (26). In Rhodesia, influenza-related mortality rate was ≈4× higher in mining compounds (9.2%) than in villages (2.3%) (among mine workers, overall influenza cases 19,471, deaths 2,851, case-fatality rate 14.6%) (27).