Historical gold mining infectious disease epidemics

Abstract

Lethal infectious disease epidemics have historically occurred in military, refugee and mining camps where crowded conditions promote the spread of enteric, respiratory and insect-borne infections. The early history of gold mines around Palmer River, Queensland in the 1870s, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia in the 1890s and Papua on the island of New Guinea in the 1910s are recounted specifically as it relates to infectious disease deaths. Despite large diagnostic gaps, it is likely that malaria was the predominant problem in Palmer River, typhoid in Kalgoorlie and bacillary dysentery in Papua. Nearly two-thirds of all recorded deaths in the Palmer River district from 1873 to 1883 were due to infections, predominately 'fevers'. Typhoid fever likely killed >2000 Australians in the early phases of the Western Australian goldfields in the 1890s. Severe dysentery outbreaks killed up to a majority of the local workforce in the Lakekema goldfields of Papua resulting in the colonial authorities stopping mining activity in the second decade of the 20th century. In the absence of public health measures and specific chemotherapy, large mortality rates in miners reflected the over-riding economic drivers of gold miners and their lack of any understanding of microbial disease and its interruption by public health measures. Similar infectious disease epidemics are likely to reoccur when large numbers of impoverished miners use low-technology methods to work alluvial gold deposits in conflict areas as has been seen in modern Africa.