How have pandemics changed the world?
– Pandemics have always had a major impact on human lives and have literally changed the course of history. As a result of the pandemics, wars were lost and won, systems, societies were changing… Now, and on our skin, we can feel the COVID-19 pandemic changing our lives, our economy, our society… – says Prof. dr. sc. Stella Fatović-Ferenčić, Head of the Division of History of Medical Sciences, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
– Vaccination has opened new perspectives and become one of the important modalities in the prevention of other infectious diseases. Smallpox is now a disease that has been eradicated and is nowhere else in the world – says this expert in the history of medicine, adding that the cholera pandemic that emerged in the 19th century is responsible for initiating sanitary reform in Europe. Before that, wastewater and drinking water were mixed in cities, and then water and sewerage systems began to be regulated. Also, Fatović-Ferenčić points out that public health laws are being passed at that time, and the fact about health as a direct responsibility of society is being raised.
– Each new pandemic exerted a new and stronger pressure on civilization and society to reconsider their views regarding hygiene and public health, medicine and science, but also worldview, that is, stigmatization and cultural, sexual, religious and other differences. Each pandemic inspires new measures and new knowledge and puts an imperative on our relationship to the world and the environment – concludes Stella Fatović-Ferenčić, adding that the AIDS pandemic in the second half of the last century forced the world to re-examine its views on sexuality, or homosexuality, and was made aware of the fact that there is no disease that occurs in the third world without soon appearing in the rest of it.
Read more at: https://www.vecernji.hr/vijesti/kako-su-pandemije-mijenjale-svijet-1394442 – www.vecernji.hr
