Smallpox in Kenya, 1880–1920

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century smallpox epidemics usually occurred during or at the end of famines. Many historians have noted the relationship of smallpox and famines. They believed malnutrition lowered resistance to the disease. and hence brought on the epidemic. Nutrition, however, affects only the mortality rate of smallpox victims, and not the morbidity rate. The heightened morbidity resulted rather from the famine responses of the starving populations. Increased population movements. trade, crowding into areas with food, and the like. were the reasons for the epidemics, not malnutrition.

The early colonial period saw African societies undergo social and economic changes similar to the famine responses above. Trade expanded greatly with the introduction of cash crops; labor migration caused larger and more frequent population movements; and urbanization created larger and denser populations. The introduction of vaccination did help mitigate the adverse epidemiological effects of these changes, but the British vaccination campaigns were beset with many problems of their own. The result was that smallpox appeared in frequent local outbreaks with low mortality, and only occasionally in widespread epidemics.