National Geographic - USA (2020-08)

IN FOCUS

Plague

The third

pandemic of

the plague

began in China

in 1855 and

reached every

continent but

Antarctica

between 1894

and 1900. The

bacteria hit

Madagascar

in 1898 and

remains today.

A sanitary team puts a

plague victim in a coffin

during an outbreak in

Madagascar around 1935.

Some doctors were con-

cerned that the Malagasy

tradition of famadihana,

or reburial, helped spread

the disease. Practiced

mostly in the island’s cen-

tral highlands, the ritual

requires mourners to

exhume, clean, re-shroud,

and dance with corpses,

before reinterring them.

Despite governmental

efforts to discourage fama-

dihana, some new cases

of plague in Madagascar

have been associated with

reburial gatherings.

INSTITUT PASTEUR

During the 1990s
researchers discovered
a new drug-resistant
strain of the plague
in Madagascar.