Weary of self-improvement, the Great Powers were trying to expand their possessions and civilisation globally. Conversely, countries in the Global South are struggling with health, food, and economic and political crises. The pandemic-19 exposed the health and infrastructure facilities in the least developed states of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Africa’s medical history is an important yet neglected area; throughout history, the disease has played a significant role, and efforts to manage endemic and epidemic diseases have been essential and significant factors in the region. Several African states witnessed the emergence and origin of several epidemic and pandemic diseases.
Historical Epidemiology and Background
With information about past incidents and spatial distribution of different diseases, medical historian Erwin A. Ackerknecht tried to integrate the evident fields of social, economic, environmental, and historical factors into a sub-discipline known as historical epidemiology. Historical epidemiology has its roots in the observations of the ecological determinants of diseases based on place.
Most of the infectious diseases had been brought to Africa through colonialism and the slave trade from the West. Research demonstrates that profoundly destructive consequences were found with introducing diseases to the African populations and their ability to structure the environment during the late pre-colonial and early colonial periods. There were detrimental effects of white dominance on African health that combined a grasp of biological knowledge with a political and economic perspective.
The Diseases in Question
The World Health Organisation’s Global Health Observatory Data Repository concluded that the below-mentioned communicable diseases have been the biggest killers or threats in Africa by a large margin.
HIV/AIDS- HIV/Aids is the biggest killer in Africa by a large margin, with 122 deaths per 100,000 people in 2012—a significant worldwide public health issue for which there is currently no cure. HIV has an impact on the immune system, which progressively erodes the body’s capacity to fight against infections and cancer. HIV is spread by the interchange of bodily fluids from infected individuals, including blood, breast milk, semen, and vaginal secretions. Poverty eventually succumbs to a lack of medical care, education, and prevention, and the subject is a “taboo,” the infected being stigmatised and expelled from society are the well-known causes. Polygamy, promiscuity, and prostitution practised in African regions favour the spread of HIV.
Cholera- If treatment is not received, cholera, an acute diarrheal infection, can be fatal in a matter of hours. Diarrhoeal diseases caused the second-largest number of deaths. Controlling the spread of cholera and other waterborne illnesses requires clean water and sanitary facilities.
The factors that impede efforts to achieve optimal environmental sanitation and personal hygiene, such as consuming contaminated food, drinking contaminated water, and participating in unhealthy environmental practices like indiscriminate waste and sewage disposal and inadequate toilet practices, are often the cause of this regressive trend.
Malaria- Malarial fever was the most important of the diseases of the tropics. They could not get precise information about the disease’s production for a long time, but during the past two years, they have unquestionably identified at least one route of infection. They were confident that the bite of the gnat or mosquito species known as anopheles was frequently, if not always, the cause of malarial fever. There are many reasons that malaria is so persistent in Africa. Four of them are poverty, human movement, resistance, and climate change.
Ebola scientists speculate that the cause of the Ebola outbreak might stem from the prevalent consumption of bushmeat from animals like monkeys and fruit bats. The scientific concerns about eating bushmeat start with our genes. The likelihood of an infectious and incurable disease like Ebola spreading from a monkey to a human is ten times greater than that of any other animal since humans and monkeys share 99% of the DNA. Ebola is found in the body fluids of someone sick or has died. Their sweat, tears, mucus, saliva, vomit, diarrhoea, urine, breast milk, sexual fluids, and blood contain the disease, and it can enter a healthy person through tiny breaks in the skin or openings in the body.
Marburg– The “bleeding eye disease” that isnotable for causing severe haemorrhagic fever. Since research on Marburg virus transmission from wildlife to humans continues, preventive methods against the infection are not well defined. One strategy to prevent disease, though, is to stay away from fruit bats and ill non-human primates in central Africa. Marburg haemorrhagic fever has no particular treatment. Survival is increased by early supportive care combined with symptomatic therapy and rehydration. Although no approved treatment has been shown to neutralise the virus, several pharmacological, immunological, and blood therapies are being constantly developed.
COVID-19- Lack of education and awareness increased ignorance and irresponsibility in different countries in the African continent. Suggestions that a prayer and a regimen of herbal remedies were enough to keep the pandemic at bay. Scientists believed that Africa would receive the most brutal blow, which stood unchallengeable considering the developmental circumstances, but the continent reported fewer deaths than the developed ones. The reasons are that a young population is not susceptible to low immune systems, no foreign contact, limited transportation and movement in rural areas, and the governments take quick safety measures. However, the aftermath of the pandemic is hitting Africa’s economy hard and disrupting tourism and other crucial sectors.
While overall communicable diseases account for the majority of deaths, several non-communicable diseases were also featured on the list – including ischaemic heart disease (hardening of the arteries), diabetes, and cirrhosis of the liver.
Past to Present
As African health issues have gained more attention in recent years, it can be helpful to reconsider presumptions about current efforts by examining how previous actions have affected the changing distribution and prevalence of diseases. The scientific practices and the medical interventions of the past have seemed to hold little meaning.
Any consideration of disease and medicine in Africa must consider local theories and cures, even though present health conditions on the continent suggest that indigenous medical systems are ineffectual. By examining the histories of disease processes and interventions, African historians can combine historical and biomedical information and contribute to collaborative and multidisciplinary research in this area, leading to better public health outcomes and practice.
The molecular studies of the emergence of various infectious diseases have presented historians with new evidence to contextualise. For instance, the strong forces of urbanisation, forced relocation, and biome conversion have long changed the environments where infectious diseases might spread. Depending on the pathogen, these changes may have increased or decreased transmissions. Over the past ten years, the research of infectious disease processes in Africa has gained increased importance due to the devastating mortality and morbidity crises caused by the AIDS epidemic, the revival of malaria, and the concurrent spread of tuberculosis as an opportunistic infection.
For instance, the rapid urbanisation processes have focused the demand for bush meat in urban areas, increasing the likelihood that pathogens from their wild animal hosts may be introduced. Cholera has grown endemic in Africa as a result of the refugee camps’ inadequate plans for handling human waste, which have made it easier for infections to spread through the faecal-oral route. Because malaria vector mosquitoes require clean water to breed, the pollution of water sources in some of the significant peri-urban areas has decreased the spread of malaria. However, it also increases water-borne pathogens and creates a “toxic fringe” around the cities.
Conclusion
Continuous research and global collaboration are essential to address these public health concerns, especially given Africa’s unique challenges. In areas vulnerable to infectious diseases, disease surveillance proves to be a phenomenally successful tactic. Because transnational epidemics are unpredictable and substantially influence economic stability, morbidity, and mortality, robust surveillance and reporting systems must be established and strengthened at the individual, regional, national, and international levels.
