.....WHAT DO PEOPLE DIE OF DURING FAMINES: The Great Irish Famine in comparative perspective.......The Irish Famine killed over a million people who would not have died otherwise. The nosologies published by the Irish census provide a rich source for the causes of death during these catastrophic years. .......Most of the other diseases that killed people during the Irish famine were infectious diseases. Some were opportunistic diseases that took advantage of the fall in nutritional status and the general environmental deterioration. Specialists distinguish between individual immune-suppression and social or collective immuno-suppression. Individual immunity declines as the body is deprived of food, especially proteins. Recent research has questioned the widely held assumption that malnutrition inevitably leads to increased susceptibility to infection. .......During major famines, however, there is a threshold effect whereby a switch occurs from a regime of subnutrition or even malnutrition to one of acute deprivation, in which the immune system is severely impaired. Even then the effect is uneven. Some diseases are highly sensitive to food intake, others seem to operate entirely independent of nutritional status, and still others are in-between. In Ireland the potato blight reduced food quality as well as its quantity. One consequence, unsuspected by contemporaries, was that the intake of Vitamin C, now recognised as an essential element in human resistance to disease, fell precipitously. Irish diets had always been rich in Vitamin C thanks to the potato; as diets changed after the onset of the blight, scurvy made an unexpected appearance in Ireland. .......Few people were reported to have died of scurvy, but the accompanying weakening of immune systems must have contributed to the onset of, and increased fatality from, other diseases. .......Collective or communal resistance to disease during famines in the past declined for very different reasons: as famines worsened, social structures such as formal and informal support networks and medical care broke down. Moreover, the decline in human energy output reduced labour productivity throughout the economy, leading to positive feedback effects thareinforced the initial shock. Famine begot reduced agricultural productivity which led to more famine. In addition, as Fogel and Sen have pointed out, a decline in total food supply was usually accompanied by a change in its distribution, normally to the disadvantage of the poor, people at the extremes of the age distribution, the less healthy, and possibly women. ADDITIONAL INFO: irserver.ucd.ie/bitstream/handle/10197/449/ogradac_article_pub_037.pdf?sequence=3
Posted on: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 02:18:28 +0000
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