Top 5 Twentieth Century Pandemics

By Milburga Rodríguez Rivera
Translation by Patricia Roxana Solórzano

Wars have been the longtime threat of mankind but now they have given their place to another enemy: viruses. These microscopic organisms are attacking humans in a silent but efficient way. In the following posts I will mention the some of the most relevant, along with some that have emerged from mutations and therefore increased the risk for a modern pandemics.

Bird Flu

The outbreak began in Spain in 1918, therefore it is also called the “Spanish Flu”, and it has been the greatest pandemics in history. It left behind a total of 50 to 100 million dead in 18 months and then it simply disappeared, leaving no trace.

Dr. Edwin Jordan, editor of the Journal of Infectious Disease of the U.S. has concluded that the virus originated in the United States and it spread over Europe when American troops were sent to the continent. Other theories pointing to either France or Asia are less conclusive.

Later on, the virus suffered a mutation (H5N1) that can only be transmitted from birds to humans. Human to human transmission is impossible, “Indonesia became by 2008 the first nation with more than 100 deaths accountable to this disease, the mutation has become endemic and is contained within the Malay islands…” Indonesia turned into the hub for this epidemic, but if this virus undergoes further mutations, the world will be exposed to a fast and lethal spread.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has appointed certain countries to become a strategic boundary so that the flu remains contained. These countries are: the U.S., Belgium, France and Brazil and they work on research in order to find and prove a vaccine that may protect humans from this possible pandemics. Specifically in Brazil, the only South-American country to receive this variation of the virus, they are about to test a possible vaccine to protect the country from the disease.