The exhibition is open from 11 November 2018 - 31 March 2019 at Our Lady's Home of Compassion at Island Bay in Wellington.

Eight Sisters of Compassion responded. As the disease worsened they were joined by a further eight sisters. The cases were so severe that very thorough organisation was required to cope with the crisis.

Sister Clotilde was placed in charge of the sisters and was given authority to have the worst cases admitted to hospital.

She had a motorcycle with side-car reserved for her use. Boy Scouts were placed at her service to take messages to the depot or to her sisters.

By the end of the first week, the sisters moved from Island Bay to Berhampore where their nursing skills were badly needed.

About this time Father Gilbert, acting on the advice of Doctor McEvedy, closed St Patrick's College and sent the boarders home.

Two college dormitories were offered to the Minister of Health as an emergency hospital and were placed under the direction of the Sisters of Compassion.

The hospital was open for one month. There were 48 beds, and the sisters and volunteers nursed 91 men of every denomination. 54 survived and 37 died.

Many of the sisters contracted influenza and during their illness meals were provided by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart.

Sister Natalie, who was in charge of the nursery at the Home, caught the flu when visiting her brother. She was the only sister to die from influenza.

Suzanne Aubert was in Rome during this period and the flu was one of the reasons which delayed her return to New Zealand.

She wrote that she was happy with the work the sisters were doing in caring for the sick.

The Exhibition is on display at the Home of Compassion at 2 Rhine Street (off Murray Street), Island Bay, Wellington, from Tuesday to Saturday 10am-3pm. Click here to see exceptions.

Source

• Supplied: Juliet Palmer
• Image: compassion.org.nz

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced support for the memorial and the refurbishment of the nurses' training centre to mark the centenary of the arrival of a ship from New Zealand which was carrying sick passengers.

"One hundred years ago the New Zealand passenger ship Talune arrived in Apia, with flu infected passengers on board. The consequences of that arrival were devastating," Peters said.

"We acknowledge that almost all Samoan families were impacted in some way by the epidemic and we respectfully join with Samoa to mark the centenary today as National Health Day."

On 7 November 1918, the New Zealand passenger and cargo ship Talune arrived at Apia from Auckland.

On board were people suffering from pneumonic influenza, a highly infectious disease already responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world.

Although the Talune had been quarantined in Fiji, the New Zealand administration in Samoa allowed sick passengers to disembark with no quarantine checks.

The disease spread rapidly, killing an estimated 20 percent of the population - at least 8,500 people - in less than two months.

In New Zealand, the number who died was 8573.

According to a 1947 United Nations report, the epidemic in Samoa ranked as one of the most disastrous epidemics recorded anywhere in the world during the 20th century, so far as the proportion of deaths to the population is concerned.

The commemoration was marked with a public holiday, church service and ceremony at the mass grave at Vaimea, one of the dozens of mass graves that dot the country.

The New Zealand High Commissioner to Samoa represented the government at commemoration services in Apia.

Source

• tvnz.co.nz
• radionz.co.nz
• scoop.co.nz
• radionz.co.nz
• nzhistory.govt.nz
• Image:en.wikipedia.org

If we fail to understand and take care of the natural world, it can cause a breakdown of these systems and come back to haunt us in ways we know little about. A critical example is a developing model of infectious disease that shows that most epidemics — AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, SARS, Lyme disease and hundreds more that have occurred over the last several decades — don't just happen. They are a result of things people do to nature.

Disease, it turns out, is largely an environmental issue. Sixty percent of emerging infectious diseases that affect humans are zoonotic — they originate in animals. And more than two-thirds of those originate in wildlife.

Teams of veterinarians and conservation biologists are in the midst of a global effort with medical doctors and epidemiologists to understand the "ecology of disease." It is part of a project called Predict, which is financed by the United States Agency for International Development. Experts are trying to figure out, based on how people alter the landscape — with a new farm or road, for example — where the next diseases are likely to spill over into humans and how to spot them when they do emerge, before they can spread. They are gathering blood, saliva and other samples from high-risk wildlife species to create a library of viruses so that if one does infect humans, it can be more quickly identified. And they are studying ways of managing forests, wildlife and livestock to prevent diseases from leaving the woods and becoming the next pandemic.

It isn't only a public health issue, but an economic one. The World Bank has estimated that a severe influenza pandemic, for example, could cost the world economy $3 trillion. Read more

Sources

• The New York Times Sunday Review
• Image: Ohio State University