1918 Spanish Flu in the South West
January 6th, 2009
Bird-flu threat recalls spread of Spanish flu that ravaged city in
1918
Diana Washington Valdez, El Paso Times
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
The potential threat of a bird-flu pandemic is stirring interest in
the Spanish flu of 1918 that devastated El Paso and killed millions
around the world.
Interest in the Spanish flu, which health experts learned actually
began in the United States, prompted PBS to rerun its 1998 TV
documentary "Influenza 1918" in recent weeks.
And earlier this year, Dr. Guillermo Mendoza of El Paso helped
organize a health conference for the U.S.-Mexico Border Health
Association that included a presentation on a Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention study titled "The 1918 Spanish Influenza
Pandemic."
Historian Bradford Luckingham described El Paso's experience with
the Spanish flu in his book "Epidemic in the Southwest," published
in 1984 by UTEP's Texas Western Press.
In El Paso, which had 75,000 residents at the time, the author said
the fast-moving virus sickened 1,800 people and claimed more than
400 lives. Within weeks, the city reported more than 3,000 cases,
and many of the victims included Fort Bliss soldiers and Hispanics
who lived in South El Paso.
James Snyder, principal of Aoy Elementary School, checked into the
school's history and found that the old campus in South El Paso was
used to treat the rising number of cases. He said the school was
turned into an emergency hospital on Oct. 17, 1918, with 100 beds.
Catherine Gorbutt, Aoy's principal then, also assisted the medical
staff that treated the patients.
According to the Luckingham book, the Spanish influenza hit El Paso
with devastating force in the fall of 1918, taking its toll in South
El Paso, an area that lacked hospitals and other health services.
"Fifty-one Mexican men, women and babies lay gasping in the
improvised wards of Aoy School last night," said one of the El Paso
Times accounts quoted in the book.
Two weeks ago, The Associated Press reported that a milder strain of
bird flu (H5) was found in a duck in Canada. As a precaution,
Canadian authorities ordered the elimination of 56,000 birds near
Vancouver. The H5N1 strain is the one that has killed people in Asia
and has health officials worried.
Mendoza said his late grandmother, Barbara Gandara, who died in 1989
at age 90, told him about family members who had died from the
Spanish flu while traveling from Parral to Delicias within the state
of Chihuahua.
There was turmoil in Mexico due to the Mexican Revolution, and many
people moved north to get away from the upheaval. "The most
important lesson we can learn from the 1918 pandemic is that access
to vaccines makes a big difference in whether people will survive
another pandemic," Mendoza said.
Yolanda Barraza, associate director of Baptist Clinic in Central El
Paso, said her 90-year-old father, Luciano Lujan, survived the
pandemic that killed his parents.
"They were in another part of Texas when it happened. He was 2 years
old at the time, but his older brother who helped raise him, my
uncle Luis, told him that whenever anyone got the flu back
then, 'for sure they would die the next day.'"
Barraza said that because of that family experience she makes sure
her mother and father get the flu vaccine each year. "I struggled a
bit last year because of the vaccine shortage, but whenever they
announce the flu shots, I make sure they get in the line for
theirs," she said.
Dr. John Tune, president of the El Paso Medical Society, said El
Paso and the rest of the country are better prepared today to
confront a flu virus than they were 87 years ago.
"Back then, they didn't have many large hospitals with intensive
care units and we didn't have as many antibiotics as we do today.
I've seen old pictures that show how they set up make-shift clinics
in tents all over the city. But things have changed much in nearly
90 years," he said.
"The main reason people died from the flu was because they developed
respiratory problems. They did the best they could with what they
had back then. I'm surprised more people didn't die," he said.
Tune said he is confident that a vaccine to protect against bird flu
will be developed within the next two years, and that this will
prove to be the best defense against the threat of a new worldwide
pandemic.
Historians said the Spanish flu, which appeared suddenly and
mysteriously, left in much the same way.
http://www.borderlandnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051129/NEWS/511290325/1001
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