module 5

For this module I have done research on The Third Plague Pandemic. This plague was third after the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death.  It struck the Chinese province on Yunnan in 1855 and mostly affected China and India. That being said there were cases all the way own San Fransisco and South Africa. It was fun that humans were vulnerable to this plague due to rat flea bites. This pandemic was considered active by the WHO until 1960 once the death rates finally dropped to below 200. While it was active it took about 15 million lives before it died out. While this pandemic was the third bubonic plague, the doctors and medical professionals hadn't figured out what exactly caused this and what the disease was until about the middle of this third time around. In 1894, a doctor named Alexandre Yersin identified Yersinias pestis as the agent for the plague and it was found that strains of Y. pestis were introduced to the Europeans in the first 2 plagues and they had went extinct before the new and third strains found during the third pandemic. The plague was spread on ships and taken to many different places with the first case in Europe showing up around 1896 when two sailors died on the ship coming from Bombay docked in London. The third plague pandemic is important because of the many recorded cases that were able to be saved and studied. Breakthroughs were made numerously after this plague because the scientists and physicians could compare cases and take into account there pre-antibiotic era. An interesting finding that isn't surprising now that we are able to research, is that the cases were widespread but most of the outbreaks were in the coastal regions or port cities. This makes sense as we now know the plague was spread on the ships. I think one of the biggest things taken from this was the extent to which sanitation needed to be taken seriously. The more they paid attention, the more they realized and took into account that there was a rise of rat deaths too and the amount dirty infected materials were probably left around ships. Coming from this was multiple meetings about how to keep people safe and sanitary.