History
The first death occurred on September 21 1947, when a man from al-Qurayn fell ill with severe vomiting and diarrhea, and died within hours. The director of the local hospital, Sami Labib, suspected food poisoning, sending samples from the man to Cairo for testing. [5] He continued to diagnose the issue as food poisoning until 4am the following day, when Labib himself developed the same symptoms. Four hours later, he telephoned the health inspector at Faqus asking for a team to be sent to the village. He later died that day. After arriving at the village, the inspector concluded that it was cholera and contacted the Contagious Disease Inspector at 2:30 pm on the 22nd. Other potential cases of cholera were reported as early as the 16th. [6]
On the 24th, the minister of health Nagib Iskandar called press conference after visiting al-Qurayn with his team. He announced thirty-six new cases and urged the public to remain calm. The army was called into to prevent people from leaving the town, though people were able to smuggle out. [7] The main issue was the lack of sanitation, since many fellahin drank water from the same canals that were used to disposing of waste and bathing. [5] Another one of the government's tactics was to put infected people in isolation camps. Yet these camps were incredibly unpopular, as Egyptians tried to conceal their symptoms to prevent getting sent to the camp. [8]
Prime minister Nuqrashi raised £E 500,000 for relief efforts. [9] Millions of vaccines were either donated or sold at below market value to Egypt; by late October Egyptian labs were able to produce all the vaccines required. [10] Local political organizations also mobilized to stop the epidemic. The Muslim Brotherhood organized forty thousand of its member to distribute pamphlets from the ministry of health and to care for patients. Trucks with loudspeakers instructed people about health regulations. Young Egypt also organized to fight against cholera. Its leader, Ahmed Hussein, called its members to "make himself a soldier against cholera". Ibrahim Shukri, the vice president of the party, injected the local fellahin the vaccine and had the sick isolated in his local village; there were no further deaths after his efforts. The Wafd Party, now out of power, formed their own committee to study the disease and published a report on the government's shortcomings. On the last week of October, one thousands Wafdists volunteered in the Wafd stronghold of al-Munira, which was badly struck with cholera. The socialists of the DMNL (Arabic acronym: HADITU), also created student associations to fight cholera in the slums of Cairo, distributing soap, phenol, and lysol as well as reporting and quarantining cases. The Muslim Brotherhood sent thugs with clubs to attack the socialists, and the police began breaking up DMNL groups. [11]
The international community also played a crucial role in assisting Egypt. The US, though the Navy Medical Research Command based in Cairo, was able to secure 10,000 pounds of vaccines and other supplies within 24 hours. NAMRU also sent teams to vaccinate schools; it is estimated that they inoculated 1,000 people a day in a month, which one local paper called “one of the most spectacular examples of medical cooperation in history.” [12] The British government donated 1.4 million doses and British companies sold 1.8 million doses of the vaccine to the Egyptian government. Other countries that donated though the WHO include the USSR, Switzerland, Tunisia, France, the Netherlands, Brazil, Iraq, Italy and China. [13]
One of the major controversies of the epidemic was its origin. On 8 September 1947, cholera had broken out in Punjab. In an article for Akhbar el-Yom, Muhammad Hasanayn Haykal, wrote cholera was spread to Egypt from a local British base near al-Qurayn. This started a major political scandal in Egypt, as Egyptian nationalists blamed the British for the epidemic. However, the source of the epidemic was never proven, Nonetheless, the epidemic became a useful tool in advocating for Egyptian impendence. [14]