- "What is past, is prologue" It can happen
again! - Patricia Doyle
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- Alaska State Summit
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- Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery By the Honorable
Mike Leavitt
- Secretary of Health and Human Services
- April 13, 2006
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- That Great Pandemic also touched Alaska.
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- When the pandemic flu became rampant in the lower 48
states, Alaska territorial governor Thomas Riggs, Jr. imposed a maritime
quarantine and restricted travel to the interior part of the territory.
U.S. Marshals were stationed at all ports, trailheads, and river mouths.
Schools, churches, theaters, and pool halls were closed.
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- In Juneau, residents were instructed to "keep as
much to yourself as possible." Fairbanks established quarantine stations,
also guarded by Marshals. People were checked periodically for flu and,
if healthy, were given armbands reading "OK Fairbanks Health Department."
Vaccine was imported from Seattle and distributed throughout the area,
though it, of course, didn't work. In Native villages, shamans encouraged
people to plant "medicine trees" that could protect against influenza.
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- Unfortunately, despite these precautions, influenza spread
throughout the territory. Half of Nome's white population fell ill. Walter
Shields, Nome's Superintendent of Education, was one of the first to die.
The Alaska Native population in Nome was decimated-176 of the 300 Alaska
Natives in the region died.
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- Elsewhere, entire Native families too sick to feed their
fires froze to death in their homes. Many who were brought to a makeshift
hospital believed that it was a death house, and so, instead, committed
suicide. Spit the Wind, widely considered Alaska's greatest musher, died
at the age of 25. He had survived a grueling expedition to the North Pole
in which he had been forced to eat his snowshoe lacings, but he couldn't
survive the flu.
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- On November 7th, the governor issued a special directive
to "All Alaskan Natives." Natives were urged to stay at home
and avoid public gatherings-something anathema to their communal lives.
The pandemic swept through communities, killing whole villages. One schoolbteacher
reported that, in her area, "three [villages were] wiped out entirely,
others average 85% deaths.... Total number of deaths reported 750, probably
25% [of] this number froze to death before help arrived."
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- Because they were so sick with the flu, many Alaska Natives
and others were unable to chop wood or harvest moose' so, after the pandemic
had passed, many more died of starvation. Some people were forced to eat
their sled dogs, and some sled dogs ate the dead and the dying.
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- When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis
to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than
the past. If a pandemic strikes again, it will strike in Alaska.
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- http://www.pandemicflu.gov/general/greatpandemic.html#alaska
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- Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD
- Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics
- Univ of West Indies
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- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message
board at:
- http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php
- Also my new website:
- http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
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