A slightly unusual view of University College Hospital, Galway (UCHG). The old incinerator brick tower can be seen just below the spire of St. Nicholas (on the left of the picture) – the cathedral is on the extreme left of the photo.
I’ve been laid up for the last week, suffering from the ‘flu. It pretty much wiped me out for the entire week, but there isn’t much that can be done except sit it out. Apart from plenty of Benylin and the occasional Panadol Max, there wasn’t any medicine I could take either. I’m lucky – I’m not elderly and I don’t have any other illness or allergy (apart from to housework). According the HSE (Health Service Executive), there were nearly twelve thousand flu cases during 2018. In the current flu season (which spans both 2018 and 2019), 4 people are though to have died from the H1N1 strain of flu this winter. It’s quite a contrast to this time a century ago, when a deadly flu epidemic was sweeping Ireland (and Europe). The epidemic killed more than twenty thousand people in Ireland, with estimates of up to 800,000 people suffering from the flu. The Connacht Tribune, from December 7th, 1918 :-
In Galway Union , particularly in Barna, Spiddal, and Moycullen, the disease spread like wildfire. Numerous deaths occurred, and in dozens of instances whole families were affected. Tho removal of cases to the workhouse hospital was resorted to in the majority of cases. During the week the number registered as patients in the institution was upwards of two hundred. Of that number about one hundred were ‘flu victims. Orders on an average for three or four interments are issued daily, In Barna graveyard, sixteen interments have taken place in ten days.