Abstract
BRIGADIER-GENERAL J. S. SIMMONS (Brit. Med. J., 572, Oct. 28, 1944), speaking at the seventy-third annual convention of the American Health Association at New York on health problems during the past year or so in Italy, Sicily and north-west Europe, said that the public health programme is being carried out by a very small number of American and British medical officers and that it was necessary to rely upon local medical men. The greatest problems so far had been typhoid fever, dysentery, typhus fever, smallpox, malaria, venereal disease and scabies. In Italy and north-west Europe the incidence of typhoid and paratyphoid fever rose after the military operations, but outbreaks had been limited to relatively few communities. The peak was reached in January 1944, when more than a million new cases were reported; but the outbreak was controlled so quickly that only 39 cases were reported during the last week of February 1944. Typhus had not yet been a problem in north-west Europe. Two outbreaks of smallpox had occurred in Italy, but none in north-west Europe. In February 1944, measures for the control of malaria were inaugurated in south and central Italy.
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Health Problems in War-time. Nature 155, 105–106 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/155105c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/155105c0