ANOTHER SHUTDOWN!!!

Hello Compatriots!!!

In the early twentieth century, specifically from 1918 to 1919 the world was hit with a severe pandemic called Influenza. This severe illness was a severe respiratory disease caused by an orthomyxovirus of Avian origin. The symptoms that came with it were sudden onset, fever, prostration, severe aches and pains, and progressive inflammation of the respiratory mucous membranes.

This deadly illness first found its way into the hub of the colonial capital of Nigeria, Lagos, on 14th September, 1918, as reported by the public office record, London. It was also reported that a ship named SS Bida stimulated the spread of influenza having arrived in Lagos on 14th September, 1918, from Gold Coast (now Ghana) with about 239 passengers on board, who left the ship and went into town mixing freely with the unsuspecting populace without a proper examination by the ports health officials. The first cases were 3 members from the ship at the wharf, and they were taken to the infectious disease hospital at Ikoyi, Lagos.

The colonial government wrestled to control the spread of the disease by disinfecting ships, houses and streets with sulphur fumigation and the solution from Cyclin disinfectant. This process was discontinued though, because there was shortage of both labour and disinfectants at the medical and sanitary department. And since medicine was still primordial then, the best option for the government of the day was self-isolation and restriction of movement.

The disease spread quickly to other parts of the country through the migration of people who were scared for their lives. This migration was also an act of defiant refusal to adhere to the isolation policy. And since the primary means of transportation at the time was train it didn’t take long for the disease to take root in Abeokuta and other parts of the country.

No vaccine or drug was found to cure it. The good news was that it vanished as quickly as it surfaced, but not without claiming the lives of about 500,000 Nigerians.

                Nigeria experienced yet another outbreak medically known as Vibrio Cholerae, a recurrent disease spread through contaminated water, which causes diarrhoea and dehydration. It was first discovered in India in 1817 and then spread through trade routes to parts of Europe and North America. Nigeria had a first record of it during the Seventh Cholera pandemic that originated from Indonesia. Its first case was recorded in Lagos in December 1970 but became a major pandemic in the wake of 1971 with about 22,931 people reported to have been infected and 945 deaths. However, Professor Augustine Njoku Obi from Owerri, a virologist developed a vaccine for cholera, which was approved by WHO and used to combat the Kano Cholerae outbreak in 1972.

There’s this one that I’m so familiar with!!!

Have you ever woken up in the morning feeling like there’s a log of wood on your eyelids; heavy and difficult to open and at the same time, a never-ending itch that makes you fight cautiously for the freedom of your adorable sight? But what happened when you finally pried them open with the help of a bowl of water? Your eyes are red!! OMG! Arrrggggggghhh!!! 

And there, you went from the most loved to the most avoided, because no one loves you enough to be stirring into your half-opened red eye. No!!

All I just described above are symptoms of an illness popularly known as APOLLO, and medically known as CONJUNCTIVITIS. This viral disease was nicknamed Apollo because of assumptions that it started during the moon landing of 1969 (APOLLO11). The outbreak of this disease coincided with the period of the moon landing by Neil Armstrong.

 

It was first noticed on the African soil in the then Gold Coast (now Ghana) before it spread to other African nations. Although, medical practitioners have extricated this claim of the natives, they’ve proven that Conjunctivitis was borne by the dry harmattan wind that blows in from North Africa.

From this little documentary above, we can see that the various diseases that the world has suffered so far were spread, basically, through trade routes. Hence, there’s a need for proper hygienic practices on trade transaction routes and locations. Although, history has a way of repeating itself, we must rather learn from it so we don’t fall into same ditch. This is one of the times when we should leverage on all the resources at our disposal to combat the scourge of any outbreak in this era.

Right now, Nigeria alongside the rest of the world is battling another pandemic which started in Wuhan, China. Death toll is daily on the rise; businesses are shut down.  Although medicine is highly advanced, yet no cure is in sight.  Crime rate is increasing, domestic violence is more than ever, and productivity has been reduced to the minimum, thank God for technology that has made Teleworking possible.

Well, these days when it feels like we are all housemates and flatmates, I pray that the number of us who gets “evicted reduces drastically, because THIS TOO SHALL PASS!!!

REFERENCES:

Landscape, environmental and technology in colonial and postcolonial, Toyin Falola, Emily Brownwell pp. 148-162

Journal.sagepub.com-the British approach to 1918-1919 influenza in Lagos by Jimoh Mufutau Oluwasegun

https://www.Wikipedia/conjunctivitis.com

https://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/influenza1918.