Cholera in Nineteenth-Century Mozambique: The Third Pandemic, 1859.

Edward A. Alpers discusses the third global cholera pandemic (1839-1861) as manifested in colonial Mozambique. Taking a thread from other contributors to the medical history of Africa, such as Christopher Hamlin, Myron Echenberg and James Christie, Alpers closely examines demographic impacts of the pandemic and the public health measures taken by the Portuguese colonial government of the day. Based on evidence drawn from official reports and unpublished documents, he suggests that, compared to its devastating impacts on East African coastal towns, inland northern Mozambique was less affected by the third global cholera pandemic. The author attributes this ‘relative sparing’ of the region by the pandemic to public health measures taken by the Portuguese colonial government.