La peste en Ecuador de 1908 a 1965

Abstract

The evolution of plague in Ecuador may be divided into the following three periods: the first, dating from 1908 to 1939, represents the time when the largest epidemic outbreaks occurred and both morbidity and mortality were high (11,898 cases and 5,135 deaths, or a mortality rate of 43.15 per cent). The disease was first predominant in the coastal villages and ports, beginning with Guayaquil, and then advanced to the north through the villages along the railroad through several Andean provinces; to the south only certain border localities of the Province of Loja were infected. It became endemic in the scattered rural settlements of the Sierra region beginning in 1932

The second period, from 1940 to 1959, saw a considerable decrease in the incidence of plague and its consequences as the result of prophylaxis and treatment with effective new drugs (chemotherapy and antibiotics), and the intensive use of new insecticides and raticides (DDT, 1080, and cyanogas), which reduced mortality to 23.03 per cent. Nevertheless, the disease continued to be endemic in the Sierra region because resistance to chlorinated insecticides had developed in Loja Province in 1952, and that did away with any hope of achieving eradication

The third period, dating from 1960 to 1965, showed that while mortality had decreased extraordinarily, there was a surprising increase in morbidity, as well as in the number of ...(AU)