HISTORY - NOT HYSTERIA

In 1918 my great grandfather, Te Para Puhi Te Paa, died of the flu leaving behind his young wife and 7 children. He left his home in Ahipara that morning, fit and healthy, and died that evening while visiting whanau in Pukepoto. Quarantine was put in place almost immediately. Result - his wife and kids weren’t allowed through from Ahipara – so they missed the entire tangihanga. It was a desperately sad time. The big picture context for this one death is provided by the following facts that my husband researched. Some are well-known, others may be new to you.

Servicemen returning from The Great War brought the flu virus to Aotearoa, and one of its characteristics was that it attacked in waves. In the first wave, only a few died and many people were lulled into believing it wasn’t the same flu as the one that had killed huge numbers in other countries. But it was the second wave that caused the majority of the 8,600 officially recorded deaths in New Zealand, and Maori suffered heavily. Our overall rate of death was 42.3 per thousand people, seven times that of Europeans.

In one community, Mangatawhiri in the Waikato, about 50 out of 200 local Maori died. Closer to home, in her biography Dame Whina Cooper recalled similar suffering at Panguru, in the Hokianga. “Everyone was sick,” she said. “No one to help, they were dying one after the other. My father was very, very sick then. He was the first to die. I couldn't do anything for him. I remember we put him in a coffin, like a box. There were many others, you could see them on the roads, on the sledges, the ones that are able to drag them away, dragged them away to the cemetery. No time for tangis." Although official statistics identify only 9 deaths in the Hokianga, anecdotal evidence is that there were many, many more.

To date, nobody has died from the flu outside of Mexico. But certainly, this H1N1 virus bears striking similarities to the 1918 flu. Both had origins in swine and both claimed the lives of healthy people between the ages of 19 - 35. What makes this virus more alarming than the 1918 variety is the hybrid nature of it. Almost certainly manufactured in a laboratory, this strain has combined the most dangerous elements of both the swine and avian varieties. Because of its exotic nature, it is highly unlikely that tamiflu or any other vaccine will be effective, and a new vaccine, specific to this virus, could take months to develop.

Hysteria is neither necessary nor useful at this time. Instead, planning and forethought are needed.

It may never happen, but if another pandemic does hit Aotearoa, our marae, hapu and whanau will need to have strategies in place to cope. The logistics of a tangihanga are generally easy to manage. But during a pandemic emergency measures, such as closed coffins and quarantines, impact on everything from the tono to the nehunga.

My grandmother, Paniwaka, told me once of the dislocation, shock and hurt of being within walking distance of her father yet unable to go to his tangi. He was a handsome man and I’m grateful we have his photo. I’ve visited his windswept grave on the hill there at the urupa, Te Rangi Hau Kaha, and we named our oldest grandson after him. Ae ra . Kaore e taea e tātau te whakarerekē a mua. But with a little forethought and planning based on our history, we don’t have to repeat it.