http://depts.washington.edu/sphnet/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Coovadia.pdf

The health and health system of South Africa: historical roots of current public health challenges

Teenage pregnancy in South Africa: with a specific focus on school-going learners

2018 marks the 100-year anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed ~50 million people worldwide. The severity of this pandemic resulted from a complex interplay between viral, host, and societal factors. Here, we review the viral, genetic and immune factors that contributed to the severity of the 1918 pandemic and discuss the implications for modern pandemic preparedness. We address unresolved questions of why the 1918 influenza H1N1 virus was more virulent than other influenza pandemics and why some people survived the 1918 pandemic and others succumbed to the infection. While current studies suggest that viral factors such as haemagglutinin and polymerase gene segments most likely contributed to a potent, dysregulated pro-inflammatory cytokine storm in victims of the pandemic, a shift in case-fatality for the 1918 pandemic toward young adults was most likely associated with the host's immune status. Lack of pre-existing virus-specific and/or cross-reactive antibodies and cellular immunity in children and young adults likely contributed to the high attack rate and rapid spread of the 1918 H1N1 virus. In contrast, lower mortality rate in in the older (>30 years) adult population points toward the beneficial effects of pre-existing cross-reactive immunity. In addition to the role of humoral and cellular immunity, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that individual genetic differences, especially involving single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), contribute to differences in the severity of influenza virus infections. Co-infections with bacterial pathogens, and possibly measles and malaria, co-morbidities, malnutrition or obesity are also known to affect the severity of influenza disease, and likely influenced 1918 H1N1 disease severity and outcomes. Additionally, we also discuss the new challenges, such as changing population demographics, antibiotic resistance and climate change, which we will face in the context of any future influenza virus pandemic. In the last decade there has been a dramatic increase in the number of severe influenza virus strains entering the human population from animal reservoirs (including highly pathogenic H7N9 and H5N1 viruses). An understanding of past influenza virus pandemics and the lessons that we have learnt from them has therefore never been more pertinent.

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Back to the Future: Lessons Learned From the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.

Our reflection on past treatment of urban segregation begins with the assertion that the implicit acceptance of ‘race’ as a legitimate and primary category of inquiry has impoverished the understanding of residential segregation in the South African city. The first section of the paper illustrates the prevalence of racially defined empirical urban studies and tries to explain why this categorisation remains unchallenged. In the second section of the paper we demonstrate that where efforts are made to explain the emergence of a racialised urban structure, inappropriate or inadequate points of reference are involved. Particular attention is given to the use of the race/class debate, feminist perspectives on urban policy, the literature on white supremacy and the city, and in the work on ‘race’. The final section of the paper suggests an alternative approach to exploring urban segregation. Specifically, we pose the questions: what were urban administrators in the early part of the twentieth century to do and...

Rethinking urban South Africa

/pdf/the-pneuma-network-transnational-pentecostal-print-culture-2haf0qvprh.pdf

The Pneuma Network: Transnational Pentecostal Print Culture In The United States And South Africa, 1906-1948

Fertility, mortality, and migration in the Cape Colony, 1891-1904.

Elizabeth van Heyningen’s The Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War: A Social History is the first extensive scholarly study focusing on the history of/ and everyday-life of the concentration camps in the South African War. Van Heyningen also highlights the fact that the concentration camps in South Africa were not unique occurrences, since a vast range of camps were seen in other parts of the world, especially due to colonial warfare.

The Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War: A Social History

Studies in the History of Cape Town

The concentration camps of the South African War or Anglo-Boer War, where Boer women and children, as well as many black families, were interned as a result of the British military sweeps to clear the veld, incited controversy from their inception. The high mortality, primarily from measles, caused much bitterness but the history of the camps has never been properly investigated. Instead, a mythology was created by emergent Afrikaner nationalists who deployed the women's testimonies, in particular, to establish a ‘paradigm of suffering’. Recently a number of historians have demonstrated the way in which commemoration of the concentration camps in South Africa has also been politicised. This article surveys the literature on the camps, highlighting some of the omissions.

Elizabeth van Heyningen

Papers

Fertility, mortality, and migration in the Cape Colony, 1891-1904.

The Concentration Camps of the Anglo-Boer War: A Social History

Studies in the History of Cape Town

The Concentration Camps of the South African (Anglo-Boer) War, 1900–1902

Public health and society in Cape Town, 1880-1910