Cyprus Health and Welfare
Refugee housing project in Strovolos, a suburb of Nicosia
Courtesy Republic of Cyprus, Press and Information Office, Nicosia
A Cambridge professor, visiting Cyprus in 1801, wrote
that
"there is hardly upon earth a more wretched spot" than
Cyprus, with
its "pestiferous air" and contagion. A few years after the
British
came into possession of the country, it was officially
reported
that the island was generally healthy; this could be
attributed to
the disappearance of the plague around the middle of the
nineteenth
century. According to testimony of the chief medical
officer in the
mid-1880s, however, the island's situation was far from
healthy. As
the towns and villages were often surrounded by marshes,
drainage
was often impossible and water supplies were often
contaminated.
The draining of marshes, destruction of the anopheles
mosquito,
securing of sanitary water, and introduction of elementary
health
measures freed Cyprus entirely of the plague, typhus, and
other
virulent diseases by the end of the century. Malaria
remained a
serious concern, whose effects were widely evident. The
eradication
of this disease after World War II contributed greatly to
the wellbeing of the island, so much so that some observers have
regarded
it as the most important event in the modern history of
Cyprus.
Data as of January 1991
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