DISASTERS - PANDEMIC Part A

THE WORLD

DISASTERS

Disasters Worsened by war
                    The virus struck towards the end of World War I (1914-18),killing twice as many people as the war itself. It was first called 'Spanish flu,' although it probably started in China. It reached Europe from the USA, carried by american servicemen aboard crowded troopships. In the filthy, wet trenches of the war zones, it spread like wildfire, mostly attacking young adults and causing death from lung infection, often within hours.

Hopeless cases
     Emergency hospitals were set up to isolate patients in the hope of limiting the flu's spread. But there was no effective treatment, and victims who developed pneumonia as a complication were likely to die, literally drowning from the fluid filling their lungs. The antibiotics used today to combat pneumonia were not discovered until 1933. The spread of the virus could not be controlled either - ships carried it to every part of the globe, and by early 1919, nearly half the world's 1.8billionpeople had been infected.


A plague's progress
          The black Death of 1347-52 spread to Europe from the East. Carried by rats and transmitted to humans by fleas, the plague killed around 25 million people, reducing the population of some countries by a third.




Grim reaper
       The black Death was a horrific bacterial disease that brought almost certain death. It's name came from the black, blood filled swellings seen beneath victims' skin. so many people died that carts piled with corpses were a common sight in towns and villages. Many medieval people saw the plague as a punishment from God. Paintings of the time depict Death as a skeleton riding a cart over the bodies of victims, rich and poor alike.