“In times of stress and danger such as come about as the result of an epidemic, many tragic and cruel phases of human nature are brought out, as well as many brave and unselfish ones.”
       ?William Crawford Gorgas, Sanitation in Panama

  The world has suffered through many plagues and epidemics. Bubonic plague, smallpox, chickenpox, typhus, cholera and yellow fever eliminated populations in many countries and in the foundling United States.

  Those handling the victims of these diseases have had to learn how to keep themselves safe in their care, in life and post mortem.

  One such account was written: “But there is no record of such a pestilence occurring elsewhere, or of so great a destruction of human life. For a while physicians, in ignorance of the nature of the disease, sought to apply remedies; but it was in vain, and they themselves were among the first victims, because they oftenest came into contact with it. No human art was of any avail, and as to supplications in temples, enquiries of oracles, and the like, they were utterly useless, and at last men were overpowered by the calamity and gave them all up.”

  That could have been written recently about the Ebola virus, but it wasn’t. It was written by Greek statesman Pericles (495 – 429 BC) about the plague in Athens. The toll of the disease has the same effect as we read just two short years ago from Sierra Leone.

  “The dead lay as they had died, one upon another, while others hardly alive wallowed in the streets and crawled about every fountain craving for water. The temples in which they lodged were full of the corpses of those who died in them; for the violence of the calamity was such that men, not knowing where to turn, grew reckless of all law, human and divine. The customs which had hitherto been observed at funerals were universally violated, and they buried their dead each one as best he could. Many, having no proper appliances, because the deaths in their household had been so frequent, made no scruple of using the burial-place of others. When one man had raised a funeral pile, others would come, and throwing on their dead first; or when some other corpse was already burning, before they could be stopped would throw their own dead upon it and depart,” Pericles wrote.

  HBO began playing an Academy Award winning documentary: “Ebola: The Doctor’s Story” in March 2016. You know what you are to see, but it does not prepare you for its impact: villages wiped out, families destroyed, orphans created, doctors and health care workers succumbing to the disease. They become martyrs for what many of us would not do. This film needs to be seen.

  We have realized that we, as the public, and therefore we, as funeral service employees, cannot be immune from the plagues and epidemics brought to the population. As the world becomes a much smaller place due to rapid air travel, disease can be brought to us in every intercontinental visitor.

  A new illness came along in 1980 when a young gay man suffered a rapid wasting disease that took his life. It was discovered he contracted a toxoplasmosis, a condition where cells were infected by parasites. It first was called GRID (gay related immunodeficiency); it is now called AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). The rename came when it infected many more than gay males. Funeral personnel had the frightening job of dealing with a deadly disease with no cure. Hysterics banned Ryan White, who acquired AIDS through a blood transfusion from attending school. A house in Florida, a home to three boys with AIDS, was burned to the ground.

  A Center for Disease Control report, updated in June 2015, discussed the Avian flu and its new variation: more than 700 humans infected with Asian HPAI H5N1 viruses have been reported to WHO primarily from 15 countries in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, Europe and the Near East since November 2003. Indonesia, Vietnam and Egypt have reported the highest number of human HPAI Asian H5N1 cases to date.

  The first report of a human infection with Asian H5N1 in the Americas was in Canada on January 8, 2014 and occurred in a traveler recently returning from China. Although human infections with this virus are rare, approximately 60 percent of the cases have died. Many funeral homes in the late 2000s were preparing for a major onslaught of this disease that did not come and has not come. Funeral service personnel were fed much information on handling any victims. However, as always, funeral homes were rarely kept in the informational and organizational loop by governmental agencies.

  Another disease of note has been reported by the CDC: H1N1 (swine flu):

  “2009 H1N1 (sometimes called “swine flu”) is a new influenza virus causing illness in people. This new virus was first detected in people in the United States in April 2009. This virus is spreading from person to person worldwide, probably in much the same way that regular seasonal influenza viruses spread. On June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that a pandemic of 2009 H1N1 flu was underway.”

  Funeral service seems to always be the forgotten foot soldier in these marches on maladies. Doctors and front line health care givers are the most exposed but when their treatments are unsuccessful, who must deal with the remains?

  There will never be an end to these illnesses. This was the January 2016 report on Ebola, reported by Nahid Bhadelia for National Public Radio: “Last Thursday, the World Health Organization declared the end to two horrific years of the West African Ebola epidemic. Later on the same day, the Ministry of Health in Sierra Leone announced that a patient with Ebola died in the Tonkilli region of that country.”

  Now here comes the Zika virus.

  “The routine tasks carried out by funeral service professionals (FSPs) would seem to put them at signi?cant risk of exposure to several infectious agents.”

–Researchgate.net, “Risk of Infection and tracking of work-related infectious diseases in the funeral industry #6637545