1947 Egyptian cholera epidemic

1947 Egyptian epidemic of cholera In late 1947 an epidemic of cholera swept Egypt, killing thousands of people. The first death occurred on September 21 1947 in the town of al-Qurayn. Despite government quarantine efforts, the disease spread through Lower Egypt, exacerbated due to lack of access to clean drinking water in rural villages. The Egyptian government as well as organized citizens and the international community led a major effort to fight the disease, successfully ending the epidemic by the end of 1947.Smallman-Raynor Cliff 2016 24 In the end, around 20,804 cases were reported with over 10,277 deaths, though the actual numbers are thought to be higher, up to 35,000 cases with 20,000 deaths.Bulletin of the World Health Organization 1949;2(1):154."Corrigenda" pg.154., a slight correction in the figures of (Shousha, 1948)Echenberg Myron https://books.google.com/books?id=3cQoi8S-wk4C Africa in the Time of Cholera: A History of Pandemics from 1817 to the Present 2011-02-28 Cambridge University Press 978-1-139-49896-8 80 en The last case was declared on New Years Eve 1947, though it was officially declared over on 11 February 1948, King Farouk's birthday.Gallagher 1990 136 History thumb|Article in Ākhir sāʼah about the 1947 Egyptian cholera epidemic 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.Gallagher 1990 116 He continued to diagnose the issue as food poisoning until 4 am 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.Kozma Samuels 2019 56–57 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 to prevent people from leaving the town, though people were able to smuggle out.Gallagher 1990 118 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.Gallagher 1990 116 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.Gallagher 1990 122 Prime minister Nuqrashi raised £E 500,000 for relief efforts.Gallagher 1990 119 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.Kozma Samuels 2019 59–60 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, personally injected 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 thousand 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.Gallagher 1990 124–127 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.”Sobocinski 2023 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.Kozma Samuels 2019 65 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 that 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 complete Egyptian independence.Gallagher 1990 140–159 "Chapter 8: The British Connection" In Media Andrée Chedid's novel The Sixth Day tells the story of a poor family during the epidemic. This was adapted into a film in 1986 directed by Youssef Chahine and starring Dalida, Shwikar, Hamdy Ahmed, Salah El-Saadany, and Mohamed Mounir. Struggle of the Heroes (1962) directed by Tewfik Saleh tells the story of a village during this epidemic Nazik al-Malaika wrote a poem, 'The Cholera', about the epidemicThe Cholera Al Jadid https://aljadid.com/node/2447 2025-12-20 aljadid.comAl-Malaika, Nazik. "Cholera." Third World Resurgence, no. 345/346, 2020, p. 115. TWN, www.twn.my/title2/resurgence/2020/345-346/poetry1.htm References Sources Gallagher Nancy Elizabeth https://books.google.com/books?id=rJhKEAAAQBAJ Egypt's Other Wars: Epidemics and the Politics of Public Health Syracuse University Press 1990 9780815655527 2025-09-06 Ibrahim Nada Maurics Contagion and Crisis: Narrating Egypt's 1947 Epidemic in Literature and Film November 2020 American University in Cairo https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/1577/ Kozma Liat Samuels Diane February 2019 Beyond borders: the Egyptian 1947 epidemic as a regional and international crisis https://www.jstor.org/stable/48541282 British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 46 1 50–67 10.1080/13530194.2017.1370999 48541282 JSTOR Osman Faihan Ibrahim Cholera, Crisis, and Collapse: The Role of Egypt's 1947 Cholera Epidemic in Political Disillusionment in the Liberal Experiment April 2025 The University of Texas at Austin 10.26153/tsw/60658 8 September 2025 Shousha Aly Tawfix 1948 Cholera Epidemic in Egypt (1947) Bulletin of the World Health Organization 1 2 353–381 20603928 2553924 Smallman-Raynor Matthew Cliff Andrew D. October 2016 The diffusion of cholera in Egypt, 1947: a time-space analysis of one of the largest single outbreaks in the twentieth century https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2016.07.010 Journal of Historical Geography 54 24–37 10.1016/j.jhg.2016.07.010 2025-09-06 Sobocinski André 20 September 2023 Stemming the Tide: Navy Medicine and the Egyptian Cholera Epidemic of 1947 https://www.med.navy.mil/Media/News/Article/3533326/stemming-the-tide-navy-medicine-and-the-egyptian-cholera-epidemic-of-1947/ US Navy Medicine Category:Cholera outbreaks Category:Disease outbreaks in Egypt Category:1947 disease outbreaks Category:1947 in Egypt