Tropical diseases & infections

This project covers many different diseases & infections that were prevalent during WWI and WWII, so If you know of the specific cause of death please use that, otherwise if all you can find is “Tropical Disease or Infection” use this project.

From NIH United States Military Tropical Medicine: Extraordinary Legacy, Uncertain Future. Published online 26 Dec 2013. It has charts that cover many wars & the diseases prevalent. It also has additional info you may want to read—1950 to today.

• Over the last hundred years the morbidity suffered by US troops engaged in conflict as a result of tropical infections has in some cases exceeded combat casualties. [1]

1917-1945: WWI and WWII

• Allied forces in the Middle East and East Africa suffered heavily from malaria and from diarrheal disease and dysentery in World War I [1]. Among American troops during 1917 and 1918, malaria accounted for approximately 27,000 hospital admissions [2]. Ironically, many of these infections were acquired among US naval forces in the Caribbean region and adjacent regions of the Americas, in addition to some of the malaria-endemic areas of the American South. [2]
• In World War II, hundreds of thousands of American troops serving in the Pacific theatre were struck by tropical infections, especially those returning from New Guinea and the Philippines [1]. In all, almost one million cases of tropical infections occurred among US troops [1]. Diarrheal disease and dysentery were widespread, and Mackie (1947) estimated that approximately one in four returning GIs suffered from at least one tropical infection, led by intestinal protozoa (mostly Entamoeba histolytica) or helminths (mostly hookworm infection), as well as relapsing malaria from Plasmodium vivax (and a significant number of P. falciparum infections) [1]. Schistosomiasis caused by Schistosoma japonicum was also common among soldiers fighting in Leyte, Philippines [1]. Many of these diseases were latent and were not diagnosed until American soldiers returned to the US.
• Malaria was particularly widespread in the Pacific theatre—although transmission also occurred in southern Europe and North Africa—with more than 500,000 Plasmodium spp. recorded infections [1]. The impact of malaria was summarized by Beadle and Hoffman [2]. On Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, every man who served acquired malaria, and on average more than 5,000 soldiers were on the sick list daily because of malaria, especially the marines [2]. General Douglas McArthur once said to Dr. Paul F. Russell, Col US Army Chief of the Malaria Control Branch, “this will be a long war if for every division I have facing the enemy I must count on a second division in the hospital with malaria and a third division convalescing from this debilitating disease!” [2].
• Two other vector-borne infections predominated in the Pacific theatre: dengue and lymphatic filariasis [3], [4]. Lymphatic filariasis forced the evacuation of large numbers of troops from New Guinea and the Tonga Islands, costing the US military an estimated $100 million [4]. A significant percentage of US prisoners of the Japanese in the Philippines and elsewhere also acquired tropical infections including malaria, strongyloidiasis, and nutritional deficiencies leading to neuropathies and cardiac beriberi [1], [5].

Sources for 1-5

• 1.) Mackie TT (1947) Tropical disease problems among veterans of World War II: preliminary report. Trans Am Clin Climatol Assoc 59: 108–121. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
• 2.) Beadle C, Hoffman SL (1993) History of malaria in the United States Naval Forces at war: World War I through the Vietnam conflict. Clin Infect Dis 16: 320–329. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
• 3.) Gibbons RV, Streitz M, Babina T, Fried JR (2012) Dengue and US military operations from the Spanish-American War through today. Emerg Infect Dis 18: 623–630. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
• 4.) Leggat PA, Melrose W (2005) Lymphatic filariasis: disease outbreaks in military deployments from World War II. Mil Med 170: 585–589. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
• 5.). Robson D, Welch E, Beeching NJ, Gill GV (2009) Consequences of captivity: health effects of far East imprisonment in World War II. QJM 102: 87–96. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

References & additional reading

• NIH United States Military Tropical Medicine: Extraordinary Legacy, Uncertain Future. Published online 26 Dec 2013.
• AAPC – WWII Military Health in the Pacific by Renee Dustman. Soldiers battled enemiesk, filthy conditions, foreign disease, and wounds that linger in the aftermath. By: Freda Brinson, CPC, CPC-H, CEMC
• JMVH Volume 18 no.4. Tropical Diseases of Military Importance : A Centennal Perspective, by Peter Leggat, AM Australian Defence Health Service, MD, PhD