Dropping our guard
In November 1918, passengers from the steamship Talune were allowed ashore at Apia, despite several being seriously ill from influenza. As extraordinary as it may seem, the acting port officer was unaware that a flu epidemic was raging in Auckland, the ship’s port of departure. The consequences were catastrophic. Within a week, the disease had devastated the main Samoan island of Upolu and spread to neighbouring Savai‘i. Approximately 8500 people, more than a fifth of the population, died in the outbreak. Eighty-two years later, Prime Minister Helen Clark formally apologised to Samoa for New Zealand’s “inept and incompetent” administration of what was then a colony under New Zealand control. As with influenza in 1918, so with measles 101 years later. Once again, Samoa has been stricken by a deadly virus thought to…
