The Nigerian Victory in opposition to The 1918 Influenza Pandemic And 1897 Smallpox Epidemic

 

“Fitness is Wealth” is going the famous saying. Over the previous few months, the whole world has been thrown into bedlam over the infiltration of the “Corona Virus” code-named COVID-19. The virus which has flu-like signs and symptoms changed into first detected by way of scientists in China in December 2019, and inside the succeeding months, has unfold like wildfire to places remote from China, which include infiltrating the beaches of our loved Nigeria. This isn't the primary time our land has been ravaged with the aid of a virus or an endemic. One thing Time has taught us is that history repeats itself.

The 1918 Influenza pandemic turned into one of the most deadly in global records. It was due to an H1N1 virus with a gene of an avian foundation. It unfolds internationally between 1918 and 1919. The whole number of deaths of the pandemic turned into at least 50 million global. Consistent with the public report workplace London, influenza hit Lagos on the 14th of September 1918, 4 years after the Amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates through Lord Fredrick Lugard. The unfold in Lagos becomes fast and devastating such that within the first months the causality determines turned into sizeable – Lagos lost 1.Five% of its eighty-one,941 populace. Inhabitants around the seaports of Marina and Apapa, mainly seamen operating on ships docked on harbor ports were one of the first units of human beings to be infected with this virus, and from that factor, it spread to the hinterland and majority of humans on Lagos Island. The Colonial authorities swung into motion by way of creating a distinctive manner of spreading information, educating people on how to excellent live healthful all through that duration. House to residence disinfection was also executed to make sure the safety of the people of Lagos.

Nonetheless, human beings from Lagos reportedly fled the infested metropolis to different elements of the country. For the reason that train became the principal manner of transportation lower back then, it becomes a bit shocking that during no time the virus unfold to Abeokuta, Ibadan, Illorin, Bida, Jebba, Zaria, Kano, and Bauchi. On October 14, 1918, the flu becomes detected in Onitsha, in which a massive variety of human beings were given infected and died due to the virulent nature of the virus, with insufficient health care to combat it. By December 1918, it had unfolded all around the united states of America. Right from the first outbreak in Lagos, the colonial government labored difficult to combat it, but for the migration of human beings from infected regions to different components of Nigeria. By way of mid-1919, the pandemic got here to an end, as folks who were infected both died or advanced immunity in opposition to the virus. For the duration of the colonial times, some components of Yoruba land and other places inside the hinterland of U. S. A . Witnessed plagues and outbreak of diseases which claimed masses of lives. Humans sought local medicinal drugs and another unorthodox manner to remedy those ailments. One thrilling case of an unorthodox approach to some other epidemic, Smallpox, changed into the case of Dr. Oguntola Sapara Williams in Epe. Epe, a small city off the coast of Lagos, changed into a hit by way of a smallpox epidemic in 1897. The importance of the epidemic turned into so extreme; the death toll was greater than the network had ever recorded from any sickness ever.

Dr. Oguntola Sapara Williams, the primary local appointed assistant doctor become published to Epe to assist out with the human beings of the metropolis. While at this posting at Epe, Sapara took the unorthodox step of becoming a member of the local smallpox cult with the motive of understanding their operations and ultimately terminating their sports which he suspected become no longer helping the small network. This passed off due to blackmailing the cult individuals who might take scrapings from skin rashes of real smallpox cases and observe on the skin of uninfected individuals. In his phrases: “In 1897 after I took a fee of Epe district, the metropolis of Epe become referred to as the hotbed of the small-pox epidemic. Locating that vaccination and other precautions seemed to fail, I joined the cult, and having were given into the mysteries I summoned the small-pox priests together and threatened them with prosecution for disseminating the ailment and used perchloride (sic) of mercury answers. They left the metropolis via disgust and on account that then, up until the time I left Epe, vaccination had scope for doing true work and then the city enjoyed immunity from smallpox, hitherto unknown”

One major aftermath of this example become that the colonial authorities enacted the Witchcraft and Juju Ordinance in 1917 and made the worship of Sopona (the Yorùbá god of Smallpox) a criminal offense punishable by means of high-quality and imprisonment. Let’s now not forget about the considerable epidemic of leprosy inside the complete stretch of Egba land among 1857 and 1859, this brought about the establishment of the 1st hospital in Nigeria by using Reverend Father Coquard of the Catholic Church in Abeokuta. The health center changed into the primary installation as an international-magnificence healthcare and research center then. The health center is referred to as the “Sacred coronary heart sanatorium” nonetheless stands these days at Ittai in Abeokuta. The smallpox crisis caused the established order of clinical research departments in Lagos in which a number of those vaccines were produced regionally and additionally caused the established order of the Infectious sickness clinic in Lagos in 1899 and Abeokuta in 1923. A key lesson that becomes learned from those cases became that it's far critical to be extremely proactive in conditions like this. Proper hygiene and adherence to authorities' guidelines are key. Closure of borders and proscribing motion of humans from affected regions to non-affected areas is essential. That is just a section, and as Nigerian artiste “Veno Marioghae” aptly sang in her 1985 hit single: “Nigeria go survive.”