Health conditions

A number of health conditions appear or are mentioned throughout The Hunger Games trilogy.

Addiction

Many characters in the series struggled with addiction. Victors of the Hunger Games often turned to substance abuse to cope with their trauma.

Known alcoholics

• Haymitch Abernathy
• Chaff (implied)
• District 5 male (75th HG)

Known morphling addicts

Morphling is a highly addictive drug similar to morphine, and addicts are commonly referred to as "morphlings". Long-term abuse of the drug can result in intense weight loss and yellowing of the skin, which is indicative of liver damage. Withdrawal symptoms include tremors and vomiting.

• Casca Highbottom
• District 6 female (75th HG)
• District 6 male (75th HG)
• Johanna Mason
• Katniss Everdeen

Asthma

Hy died of asthma complications the night before the 10th Hunger Games.

Avox

Main article: Avox

An Avox is a person whose tongue has been mutilated as punishment for treason against the Capitol. This mutilation prevents them from speaking, and it poses some difficulty for them when swallowing.

Known Avoxes

• Lavinia
• Darius
• Pollux

Black lung

Black lung is a respiratory disease caused by long-term inhalation of coal dust.

The old man who took in the remaining Covey died of black lung during the year of the 9th Hunger Games. The Goat Man also appeared to suffer from black lung, as he had "a hacking cough that proves he spent years in the mines". This implies that the condition was relatively common among District 12 coal miners who survived to old age.

Blood loss

While giving birth to her infant daughter, Coriolanus Snow's mother suffered what was likely a hemorrhage and died from the blood loss.

When Boggs lost his legs in the Battle of the Capitol, he died shortly after from blood loss.

Burns

Burns were common injuries in the Seam of District 12 because they cooked and heated their homes with coal. Mrs. Everdeen was known to treat burn victims from mining accidents, and Mr. Mellark was described as having burn scars from years of working at the bakery.

Katniss considered burns the worst kind of pain. In the 74th Hunger Games, she initially had trouble overcoming her squeamishness about the burn on her calf, but was eventually able to treat it with a sponsor gift of burn ointment.

Bombings

• Many people sustained burns of varying degrees of severity in the Capitol Arena bombing, including Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird.
• Both Katniss and Peeta Mellark were left with severe burns after the City Circle bombing.

Concussion

Coriolanus Snow sustained a mild concussion in the Capitol Arena bombing.

Johanna Mason gave Katniss a concussion when she struck the girl with a heavy coil of wire at the end of the 75th Hunger Games. The effects of this lingered a month later, making it hard for Katniss to sort out her thoughts.

Deafness

When Katniss set off the land mines around the Career Tributes' supplies in the 74th Hunger Games, the explosions gave her profound hearing loss, as well as impaired balance and bleeding in her left ear. Her right ear had begun to improve by the following morning, though she dealt with a ringing sound on that side for some time after. She was deaf in her left ear for the rest of the Games, after which point Capitol doctors were able to restore her hearing in full.

Woof was also said to be hard of hearing, presumably the result of age-related hearing loss.

Dehydration

Haymitch advised Katniss to find water right away in the arena, so she was mindful of the threat of dehydration early on, which could kill her within a week. She'd seen enough tributes die that way on television over the years to know that unless a fight was going on somewhere, her death by dehydration would be featured.

Despite her efforts to locate it, she started to suffer the effects of dehydration on her second day in the arena. She mentioned that "what little urine [she'd] been able to pass" was dark brown. She also had a persistent dry patch on her tongue, a headache, light sensitivity, and eventually, fatigue. On the third day of the Games, she collapsed and couldn't get up. However, she realized she was in a patch of mud, so there had to be water nearby. She mustered the strength to crawl to the pond, and she restrained herself from drinking straight from it; instead, she filled up her flask, decontaminated it with drops of iodine, and waited half an hour before drinking.

Flu

During the First Rebellion, the Snows' cook was called to serve in the war and died of the flu. Before the reaping for the 10th Hunger Games, Coriolanus Snow considered pretending that he had the flu and calling in sick if his cousin Tigris hadn't fixed his shirt. Clemensia Dovecote's absence prior to the Games was explained away as the flu.

Starvation deaths in District 12 were often recorded as the flu. After Mr. Everdeen died in a mine explosion, Katniss was so sick with anxiety before the school's annual trips to the mines that her mother kept her home twice, thinking she had the flu.

Swan flu

Swan flu is an illness that a young Coriolanus and Tigris contracted during the First Rebellion. Symptoms included a fever, chills, and a spiking pain in the limbs. Coriolanus was once so ill that he collapsed in the street. It is likely a reference to both avian flu and swine flu.

Heatstroke

During the 10th Hunger Games, Lucky Flickerman gave a weather forecast that included "a heat advisory and tips to avoid related cramps, exhaustion, and stroke." Not long after that, Reaper Ash started pressing his hands to his head and panting heavily. However, he was not sweating. Given Lucky's earlier forecast and tips, Coriolanus recognized this as a possible sign of heatstroke.

Hypothermia

Katniss and Gale Hawthorne once recalled a year of the Hunger Games where many tributes froze to death at night, lacking wood to start fires.

Infection

Lady, Primrose Everdeen's goat, had an infected dog bite on her shoulder when Katniss bought her from the Goat Man. She was nursed back to health by Mrs. Everdeen and Prim.

Blood poisoning

During the 74th Hunger Games, Peeta Mellark sustained a leg wound from Cato that got infected, giving him blood poisoning. Katniss used her burn ointment and tracker jacker leaves to draw out the infection with little success. After she seized much-needed medication from the feast and injected it into his arm, the swelling in Peeta's leg went down, and his overall condition was much improved.

Limb difference

Amputation

After losing his hand in the 45th Hunger Games, Chaff refused a prosthetic replacement from the Capitol.

On the last day of the 74th Hunger Games, Peeta was bitten by one of the Gamemakers' wolf mutts, leaving a "gaping hole... in his calf". Katniss administered a tourniquet to prevent blood loss, but this resulted in Peeta's lower leg being amputated. He received a prosthesis.

During the Battle of the Capitol, Boggs stepped on a land mine, blowing off both of his legs before he died of blood loss.

Other amputees

• Gaius Breen lost both his legs in the Capitol Arena bombing and succumbed to his injuries twelve days later.
• In The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Bobbin was played by Knox Gibson, who is a below-elbow amputee. Gibson said of the character's disability status: "No, I don’t have a prosthetic or anything. The character is literally just an amputee. It’s not explained."
• Ripper lost her arm in a coal mining accident.
• District Hero Elias Haan was portrayed by Alex Minsky, a military veteran, model, and below-knee amputee.

Unknown cause

In the 74th Hunger Games, the District 10 male was described as having a "crippled foot".

Limited mobility

By the time of the 75th Hunger Games, Mags Flanagan walked with a cane, and after being electrocuted by the force field in the 75th Hunger Games arena, Beetee Latier used a wheelchair to get around. However, it is unclear whether this was due to paralysis or another health condition.

According to Capitol Couture, Porter Millicent Tripp sustained a spinal injury in the final showdown of the 38th Hunger Games, so she wore a halo brace throughout her Victory Tour.

Measles

The year before the 74th Hunger Games, Mrs. Everdeen kept Leevy's younger brother alive when he caught the measles. Several days after Gale's whipping, his mother Hazelle Hawthorne was at home tending to his younger sister Posy, who had visible measles spots.

Mental disability

Greasy Sae's granddaughter and Martin both had some form of mental or developmental disability. Woof also exhibited confusion and a lack of focus due to his old age, likely pointing to him having a form of dementia.

Hijacking

Main article: Hijacking

Peeta suffered from memory issues after his hijacking; he had difficulties with recall and telling his real memories apart from false ones.

Mental illness

Many characters displayed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as nightmares, traumatic flashbacks, hypervigilance, and irritability. Annie Cresta in particular was singled out as having been profoundly affected mentally by her experience in the 70th Hunger Games. Like Peeta, she also had trouble distinguishing what was real, but her condition was unrelated to hijacking.

Depression

Mrs. Everdeen fell into a deep, debilitating depression after the death of her husband, but was eventually able to recover. She later told Katniss that she could have treated herself back then if she'd had the medicine that she now had. However, it is unknown what kind of medicine this was, if it was something she took regularly, or if it was something she only took as needed.

Like her mother, Katniss fell into a severe depression after the death of her sister Prim. She also developed a form of mutism from the psychological trauma of watching her die.

Muttation

Main article: Muttation

While most muttations appeared to be non-human creatures, Coriolanus Snow once saw Avoxes with animal parts grafted onto them in the Citadel lab. Some of their conditions included small feathered ruffs around their necks, talons or tentacles in place of fingers, and gills embedded in their chests.

Clemensia Dovecote experienced unusual, snakelike side effects after being bitten by snake mutts. Four days after the incident, her skin was peeling, the whites of her eyes were bright yellow, and she exhibited several motor tics: grimacing, jerking motions of the hands, and sticking out her tongue as a snake would. She also showed Coriolanus that a patch of skin along her collarbone and onto her shoulder had sprouted scales, which she said were spreading.

Ten days after the incident, the yellow in Clemensia's eyes had faded to a paler shade and she wore a high-collared blouse to hide her scales. While the severity of her tics had lessened, her tongue was still darting around inside her mouth, and she picked at dry patches of skin on her face. Fourteen days after the incident, Clemensia told Coriolanus that the scales on her chest had finally started to fade, and that it could take "as long as a year" for them all to be gone. While the scales weren't painful, they caused discomfort because they pulled on her skin.

Pneumonia

Starvation deaths in District 12 were often recorded as pneumonia. However, Mrs. Everdeen once treated a starving child who was actually also suffering from pneumonia.

Pox epidemic

District 13 suffered an unspecified "pox epidemic" which killed many citizens and rendered a number of survivors infertile. As a result, District 13's birth rate was flattened, leaving them desperate for more fertile citizens to help repopulate. Prim once pointed out to Katniss that people bore pox scars and some of their children were disfigured. However, it is unclear whether the children had been infected themselves, or if their mothers were infected while pregnant, leaving them with congenital disorders.

In The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, Prim told Katniss that this epidemic had been "a few years ago", and that President Alma Coin had lost her husband and daughter to it.

Rabies

During the First Rebellion, the vaccination of pets became a very low priority. As a result, rabies was spread from dogs to people, killing "over a dozen Capitol citizens" before a vaccination program got the disease under control.

Ahead of the 10th Hunger Games, Jessup Diggs was bitten in the neck by a rabid raccoon on his first night in captivity at the Capitol Zoo. As the infection progressed, he began to exhibit erratic and aggressive behavior. Since one of the symptoms is a fear of water, his mentor Lysistrata Vickers sent water bottles into the Capitol Arena as sponsor gifts to drive him away from Lucy Gray Baird. He died after falling off a ledge.

According to Lucy Gray, Reaper Ash also contracted rabies when Jessup spat in his eye at the zoo, possibly explaining his own erratic behavior. She reasoned that poisoning him was a mercy kill.

In The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, a young Coriolanus and Tigris were once confronted by a rabid dog in the streets.

Sores

As president, Coriolanus Snow drank from his assassination targets' poisoned cups to deflect suspicion from himself, which caused him to develop mouth sores that never healed. He wore roses to hide the scent of the blood.

Starvation

During the First Rebellion, the rebels cut off the Capitol's food supply, leaving many people to starve. In extreme cases, some of those who survived resorted to cannibalism.

Starvation was very common in District 12, to the point where people often collapsed and died in the streets. However, the official cause of death would always be recorded as the flu, exposure, or pneumonia. Katniss, her sister, and her mother were near starvation in the months after Mr. Everdeen's death. However, Katniss received a burnt loaf of bread from Peeta one day, saving their lives.

Tracker jacker stings

Main article: Tracker jacker

Tracker jacker stings commonly range from the size of a plum to the size of an orange, swelling up within minutes. The stings themselves are extremely painful and remain so for days unless treated. The venom was engineered to target the part of the brain that generates fear, causing strange and terrifying hallucinations that can drive a person to madness. Getting stung many times in a short period can be lethal.

When Katniss dropped a tracker jacker nest on the Careers in the 74th Hunger Games, she was stung three times, while Glimmer and the District 4 female were both lethally stung. The District 3 male, Marvel, Clove, and Cato escaped with their lives, but they were still recovering for days after.

Tuberculosis

Dill suffered from tuberculosis, and she succumbed to the disease on the first day of the 10th Hunger Games. It was a treatable chronic condition in the Capitol, but a death sentence in the districts.

Other

• While not explicitly written as such in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes novel, Wovey is portrayed in the film adaptation by Sofia Sanchez, who has Down syndrome.
• Iphigenia Moss had an unspecified eating disorder that most closely resembled anorexia.
• While serving as a Peacekeeper in District 12 during a humid summer, Coriolanus Snow got a heat rash spanning "across his chest and under his right arm."
• Maude Ivory Baird mentioned being sick with croup once.
• Mrs. Undersee received vials of morphling from the Capitol to treat her debilitating chronic headaches.

See also

• Medical treatments