In the early to mid 1800's in Southern Africa health was very scarce in the normal population and the disease rate in an individual was very high with how easy diseases spread throughout that part of the continent. The main disease throughout this time was Tuberculosis also known as TB and is the disease that is very serious and has the infection to the lungs and if not treated soon enough will lead to death. Tuberculosis was mostly started due to the mining that was being done and the amount of individuals that worked on mining for the gold, diamonds and other materials were getting the lungs damaged, then the Tuberculosis would affect the lungs and then the damaged unhealthy lungs would have a very hard time fighting it off and would eventually kill the person. Tuberculosis is very easily transmitted and that is why there was a high population of citizens who transmitted the disease.
The picture above shows the amount of people per 100,000 that had Tuberculosis
This picture shows the depth they were mining at and the lack of protection and clothing they had to try and keep their skin and body away from and sickness or diseases.
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Health:
The struggle with the diseases was that there was very little treatments for the civilians to get in order to get better and what they needed in order for their disease to go away. This is when Livingstone came in and tried to bring over the medical side of his knowledge and try to get the civilians to understand what to do and not to do in order to stay as healthy as possible. It is hard for the people to stay healthy with the way the southern part of Africa was. It was very hard to get clean, somewhat purified water and water is the number one resource for people to stay healthy and away from diseases. The water that was being drank by the people was water from a well which could be contaminated by bugs and other parasites because parasites love lukewarm water that is where they try and live away from the dry heat. Mining Problems: When they Europeans found out that they had struck land that contained minerals such as gold, diamonds and coal they stayed and began a gold rush of sorts and this brought many people to this part of Africa to see if they could strike it rich with mining but little did they know the danger in mining in South Africa with all the moistness underneath the ground and sitting water that would contain all the parasites that would end up giving the miners all the diseases they could think of. The biggest percentage of deaths from mining were the diseases transmitted while down underneath but there was a percentage of deaths from just dangerous accidents with rocks and equipment breaking and that is why the mining was such a tough business for these people even with the slaves they had doing a lot of the work for them. |