Myron Echenberg

Africa in the Time of Cholera

A History of Pandemics from 1817 to the Present

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This book combines evidence from natural and social sciences to examine the impact on Africa of seven cholera pandemics since 1817, particularly the current impact of cholera on such major countries as Senegal, Angola, Mozambique, Congo, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Myron Echenberg highlights the irony that this once-terrible scourge, having receded from most of the globe, now kills thousands of Africans annually - Africa now accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's cases and deaths - and leaves many more with severe developmental impairment. Responsibility for the suffering caused is shared by Western lending and health institutions and by often venal and incompetent African leadership. If the threat of this old scourge is addressed with more urgency, great progress in the public health of Africans can be achieved. Written in a style attractive to non-specialists, this book combines evidence from natural and social sciences to examine the impact on Africa of seven cholera pandemics since 1817, particularly the current impact of cholera on such major countries as Senegal, Angola, Mozambique, Congo, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Produktdetails

• African Studies 114
• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 230
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Februar 2011
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 14mm
• Gewicht: 328g
• ISBN-13: 9780521188203
• ISBN-10: 0521188202
• Artikelnr.: 32465366

Autorenporträt

Myron Echenberg is former Chair of the History Department at McGill University, where he is now Professor Emeritus. He is a former editor of the Canadian Journal of African Studies and previously served as President of the Canadian Association of African Studies. Professor Echenberg is the author of Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague, 1894-1901; Black Death, White Medicine: Bubonic Plague and the Politics of Public Health in Colonial Senegal, 1914-1945; and Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857-1960, which won the Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association for the outstanding original scholarly work published during 1991.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction; Part I. The First Six Cholera Pandemics, 1817-1947: 1. 'The fiend of pestilence' circles the globe; 2. Medical responses; 3. Cholera ravages Sub-Saharan Africa: Senegambia, Ethiopia, and Zanzibar, 1821-94; 4. Cholera in North Africa and the Nile Valley: Tunisia, 1835-68, and Egypt, 1823-1947; Part II. The Seventh Cholera Pandemic Strikes Africa: 5. Medical changes; 6. Seventh pandemic in Africa, 1971-2009; 7. Risk factors: environment and geography, armed conflicts and the dispersal of refugees; 8. Risk factors: public health policy choices among stable and weak states; 9. Zimbabwe, portrait of cholera in a failed state; 10. Cholera today.

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Introduction
Part I. The First Six Cholera Pandemics, 1817-1947: 1. 'The fiend of pestilence' circles the globe
2. Medical responses
3. Cholera ravages Sub-Saharan Africa: Senegambia, Ethiopia, and Zanzibar, 1821-94
4. Cholera in North Africa and the Nile Valley: Tunisia, 1835-68, and Egypt, 1823-1947
Part II. The Seventh Cholera Pandemic Strikes Africa: 5. Medical changes
6. Seventh pandemic in Africa, 1971-2009
7. Risk factors: environment and geography, armed conflicts and the dispersal of refugees
8. Risk factors: public health policy choices among stable and weak states
9. Zimbabwe, portrait of cholera in a failed state
10. Cholera today.

Rezensionen

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung | Besprechung von 20.05.2011

Pandemierisiken

Cholera gehörte einst in großen Teilen der Welt zu den bedrohlichsten Krankheiten. Vielerorts hat sie ihren Schrecken verloren, doch immer wieder kommt es im Süden des Globus zu massiven Ausbrüchen. Vor allem in Afrika sterben jährlich noch mehrere tausend Menschen an der Cholera, neunzig Prozent der gegenwärtig weltweit auftretenden Fälle sind auf diesem Kontinent zu verzeichnen. Der kanadische Historiker Myron Echenberg zeichnet am afrikanischen Beispiel in seiner auch für Nichteingeweihte gut zugänglichen Studie anhand von sieben Cholera-Pandemien seit dem frühen neunzehnten Jahrhundert Ursachen, Kontext, Folgen und Umgang mit der Krankheit nach. Die größte Aufmerksamkeit richtet er auf die besonders verheerende siebte Pandemie, die seit 1971 in vier Phasen verlief. Der Autor arbeitet eine Reihe von Risikofaktoren heraus, die die rasche Verbreitung der Krankheit befördert haben. Dazu zählt er auch die zahlreichen bewaffneten Konflikte, die häufig Flüchtlingswellen nach sich zogen, ebenso die inkompetente Gesundheitspolitik vieler afrikanischer Staaten und das nicht immer glückliche Agieren westlicher Hilfsorganisationen. Preiswerte und wirksame Therapien stünden zur Verfügung, um die Auswirkungen dieser Krankheit zu kontrollieren. Es bedürfe lediglich, so Echenberg, bescheidener Investitionen für die Bereitstellung von Trinkwasser und die Errichtung von Abwassersystemen, um größere Cholera-Ausbrüche zu verhindern. (Myron Echenberg: "Africa in the Time of Cholera". A History of Pandemics from 1817 to the Present. Cambridge University Press, New York 2011. 224 S., br., 22,10 [Euro].)

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'Written by a leading historian of medicine, Africa in the Time of Cholera offers readers a timely, compelling, and deeply disturbing analysis of Africa's history of cholera pandemics. Myron Echenberg skilfully shows that cholera has made crucial, tragic contributions to human history, and that past pandemics in Africa provide us with points of critical reflection for the present pandemic. This book is absolutely essential reading for those interested in global health, development, humanitarian interventions, and politics in Africa.' Tamara Giles-Vernick, Institut Pasteur