INFLUENZA IN CAPE TOWN

Evening Star, Issue 16987, 8 March 1919, Page 4

INFLUENZA IN CAPE TOWN

"BATTLE WITH WHOLESALE DEATH."

Major Turner. Australian. Red Cross Commissioner at Cape Town, in .a letter a Melbourne doctor received from him oa-rly this month, gives a vivid picture of the conditions in Capo Town during the , recent visitation of pneumonic influenza.. 1 He writes : '' There is a difference of opinion as to the manner of infection, hut aa the disease had been virulent in Sierra. Li'one early in September there seems little doubt it found its 'Way down the -west coast in the shipping, and appeared in this town in the last -week or that month; without, however, causing any apparent anxiety in official quarters. Early in Octolier its pneumonic character asserted itself with extraordinary rapidity, and very few days had passed when dead vera picked wri in the streets, and burials became very fro orient. Although efforts- were made to allay public alarm, the conditions in a dav' or two became so appalling- that something nearly approaching a collapse took place in Cape Town. " 'file dead were everywhere—sometimes four or more in a. house, mixed with the living, who were too ill to effect a separation,"beyond in some cases laying them on the pavement. Timber, always scarce, became unprocurable for coffins, while men to work up what there was were not available. Graves could not be dug fast enough, and at the close of each day hundreds of bodies were nnburied—■usually nr.coffined —in the houses and morgues. The fraliie. in Sir Lowry road, the main avenue to the. cemeteries, soon became by dav practically an unbroken stream of funerals, fed 'by the cross streets from No. 6 District, Woodstock, and Salt River a few hearses, many waggons carrying six or more eollins, hand and mule carts, nwnv stretchers, and, saddest of all, many bodies of the very young sown up in some old doth, carried in men's arms, .So extensive was. the infection that all the ordinary utilities of urban life were «us. pended for lack of the necessary labo'\ and tor some davs business had to cease, j and the streets, but for the funerals, were I deserted. The authorities did their best, j but in this unprecedented battle with j wholesale death they were hopelessly out- I matched; and it was not until the sound j citizens, women and men, recovering rapidly from the first shock, got together and formed district relief committees- for the distribution of food and medicines and ! advice that any abatement of the scourge i was apparent. Many went down in this j great work, and some laid down their lives in the- service; but in the end their

self-denying labor of feeding and cleansing the- poor, ni*nistt>rin{r to the sick, and encouraging the well wo; the day so surely t.hat in little mere than three" weeks the death rate, though still above normal, was enormously reduced. Perhaps the figures of this are more tcmbi©'in their significance than tho»c of any similar occurrence in our time. _ The average death, rate in the peninsula is 8 to 10 per day. During the bubonic plague of some years ago it "rose to 30 per day, while for several clays in the first fortnight of the past October it stood at over 600 per day. 'l'k?. correct total will never bo known, but it is a conservative estimate -that at least 8,000 people died in Cape Town and suburbs during tha first three weeks of the month, or "practically 10 V CT cent - °f tlio total population."