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Refugees from Eastern Counties Map: Evacuation of the Lincolnshire Coast in Case of Invasion, 1916
No full textOperation Pied Piper: a geographical reappraisal of the impact of wartime evacuation on scarlet fever and diphtheria rates in England and Wales, 1939–1945
Get PDFThis paper examines the geographical impact of the British Government’s wartime evacuation scheme on notified rates of two common acute childhood diseases (scarlet fever and diphtheria) in the 1470 local government districts of England and Wales, 1939–1945. Drawing on the notifications of communicable diseases collated by the General Register Office (GRO), we establish pre-war (baseline) disease rates for the 1470 districts. For the war years, techniques of binary logistic regression analysis are used to assess the associations between (a) above-baseline (‘raised’) disease rates in evacuation, neutral and reception districts and (b) the major phases of the evacuation scheme. The analysis demonstrates that the evacuation was temporally associated with distinct national and regional effects on notified levels of disease activity. These effects were most pronounced in the early years of the dispersal (1939–1941) and corresponded with initial levels of evacuation-related population change at the regional and district scales
Models of health transition: Changing health in low- and middle-income countries
Get PDFCountries experience a transition in the major causes of illness and death as they develop economically. This article considers some frameworks for exploring these transitions, with a particular focus on recent rapid transitions in some countries of south and southeast Asia
Tracking the spread of Covid-19
Get PDFCommunicable diseases are capitalising on our highly connected world to spread as global pandemics. COVID-19 is the most recent example. This article tracks the early stages of the global diffusion of the COVID-19 pandemic, and assesses its rate of spread through the Worldwide Air Transportation Network (WAN)
The diffusion of cholera in Egypt, 1947: a time-space analysis of one of the largest single outbreaks in the twentieth century
Get PDFThe epidemic of cholera that spread through Egypt in the latter months of 1947 was one of the largest single outbreaks of the disease in the twentieth century. Using a swash–backwash model, this paper examines the geographical wave-like spread and subsequent retreat of the epidemic from an apparent origin in the settlements and prisoner-of-war camps of the Nile Delta area to reach its maximum geographical extent some six weeks later at Aswan (850 km away). Our results demonstrate the very rapid spatial advance of the epidemic wave through the provinces and governorates of Egypt, with an approximately linear sequence of progression up the Nile. Superimposed on this national pattern are pronounced differences in the rate of epidemic advance in the traditional geographical divisions of Lower and Upper Egypt. Alternative visualisations of the cholera spaces of Egypt, using techniques of multidimensional scaling (MDS) and cluster analysis, underscore the differential patterns of cholera transmission in these areas of the country. The patterns are interpreted in relation to a vigorous control effort that included restrictions on public transport, patient isolation, contact tracing and mass vaccination of the entire population exposed to risk of infection
Abrupt transition to heightened poliomyelitis epidemicity in England and Wales, 1947–1957, associated with a pronounced increase in the geographical rate of disease propagation
Get PDFThe abrupt transition to heightened poliomyelitis epidemicity in England and Wales, 1947–1957, was associated with a profound change in the spatial dynamics of the disease. Drawing on the complete record of poliomyelitis notifications in England and Wales, we use a robust method of spatial epidemiological analysis (swash-backwash model) to evaluate the geographical rate of disease propagation in successive poliomyelitis seasons, 1940–1964. Comparisons with earlier and later time periods show that the period of heightened poliomyelitis epidemicity corresponded with a sudden and pronounced increase in the spatial rate of disease propagation. This change was observed for both urban and rural areas and points to an abrupt enhancement in the propensity for the geographical spread of polioviruses. Competing theories of the epidemic emergence of poliomyelitis in England and Wales should be assessed in the light of this evidence
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