Epidemics and Inequalities in Belgium from the Plague to COVID-19

What Can We Learn about Societal Resilience?

A Brain-Belspo Research Project

2020 - 2021

Corona

Highest excess mortality in Belgium since

World War II

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1918 - 1919

Spanish flu

The most deadly 20th-century outbreak in Belgium
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1866

Cholera

The most deadly epidemic in 19th-century Belgium
L0012076 Patients suffering from cholera in the Jura during the 1854 Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org Patients suffering from cholera in the Jura during the 1854 epidemic, with Dr Gachet attending them. Pencil drawing 1859 By: Amand-Désiré GautierPublished: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

1693 - 1694

Dysentery and typhus

Epidemic outbreak and harvest failure during the Nine Years War
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1400 - 1600

Plague Waves

Recurrent epidemic outbreaks with local population losses up to 20 percent
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