FROM THE ARCHIVES – Australia and the Spanish Flu

As the first registered health fund in Australia, RT Health has weathered significant societal upheavals and public health issues since our beginnings in 1889.

We've supported our members through two world wars and a major pandemic, which came to be known as the Spanish Flu. Even though it happened more than 100 years ago, this influenza was more lethal than any before or since, including COVID-19.

Not long after the end of the First World War in 1918 – in which more than 60,000* Australians were killed in action – a deadly influenza began sweeping the world, and Australia was not immune.

On 22 January 1919, the first case of the Spanish Flu was reported in Melbourne. Three days later, a person was hospitalised in Sydney. Large numbers of patients were accommodated at the Quarantine Station at North Head and in public hospitals. Within two months, the disease was raging across the country. By February 1920, 11,552 Australians had died in the pandemic.

This was at a time when Australia’s population was only one fifth the size (5,193,104) it is today.**.

Health authorities appealed to the Railway Commissioners with a view to having a supply of masks manufactured at the Randwick Tramway Workshops. Within three days of the appeal, 41,000 masks were manufactured at Randwick and 21,000 at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops.

The effects of the outbreak were disastrous on the finances of the Railway and Tramway Hospital Fund (as RT Health was then known), and special efforts were made to enrol additional members. Nevertheless, the fund went on to prosper in the following years, surviving its first pandemic, and being around to face the threat of COVID-19 in 2020 and beyond.

When you have a long and proud history like we do at RT Health, you’re able to call on experience when planning for the future. We’re one of only a handful of health insurers who are able to say they are working from experience as we transition to dealing with day-to-day life living with COVID-19.

*From the Australian War Memorial **Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.