Soviet armed forces’ health ‘flabbergasting’

Press, 1 April 1985, Page 6

Soviet armed forces’ health ‘flabbergasting’

NZPA-NYT Washington

The Soviet Union’s military forces face medical problems that are flabbergasting, according to an American professor. Dr Murray Feshbach, professor of demography at Georgetown University, Washington, says one Russian general has said that the problems could have the “greatest negative impact on the combat capability of the Soviet Armed Forces.”

Dr Feshbach drew the quotation from an address by a General Chevyrev to a medical conference several years ago.

Dr Feshbach presented his research at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. He noted increases in infectious diseases such as typhoid, cholera, influenza and hepatitis in the military ranks. In one of numerous influenza outbreaks in 1982, about 30 per cent of the troops of individual units could have been sick.

Among the medical problems were acute intestinal infections, sometimes of epi-

demic magnitude, he said. Hepatitis, which was discussed in the Soviet literature as one of the “urgent problems of military medicine,” appeared to have increased threefold from 1968 to 75 and 1975 to 82 in large military units and up to tenfold in specific units. Out of a sampling of 203 military patients with hepatitis, one-third suffered from residual symptoms and many had to be rehospitalised.

Dr Feshbach drew his information from two journals, “Voyenno-Meditsinskiy Zhurnal” (Military Medical Journal) and “Tyl i Snabzheniye” (Rear and Supply). The Central Military Medical Directorate of the Soviet armed forces comes under the jurisdiction of the Rear Services.

Soviet militaiy doctors apparently misdiagnosed illnesses frequently, Dr Feshbach said, therefore the chances of complications and further transmission of disease increased. This was especially the case for acute intestinal infections, he said, adding that diphtheria, a growing problem, was also being misdiagnosed.

A shortage of medical supplies posed difficulties, said Dr Feshbach, reportedly leading doctors to reuse some supplies, increasing the chances of transmitting disease. Food storage conditions were said to reduce sanitary levels, with food that is contaminated by rodents reportedly being reprocessed instead of being destroyed. According to Dr Feshbach’s findings, vaccine effectiveness is generally poor. Typhoid vaccine is effective at only a twothirds rate. In one military unit with an outbreak of measles, it was found that only 88 per cent of the youths, 18 to 20 years old, had been previously immunised. Some military officials have also recommended mandatory vaccinations for draftees.

To combat these problems, Soviet officials have been creating “extraordinary anti-epidemic commissions” in all military units and on all ships.

Dr Feshbach said several recent events had attracted his attention to the Soviet military’s medical prob-

lems. In a speech in February, 1981, to a Communist Party congress, the then Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, went beyond the usual one paragraph of praise for Soviet medicine to point out problems with military medical equipment, supplies, cadres and other areas. Brezhnev’s speech led to more criticism.

In February, 1983, Admiral Aleksei Sorokin, first deputy chief of the Political Military Administration of the Soviet armed forces, wrote in “Voprosy Filosofii,” an ideological journal, that there had been no increase in the average life expectancy of draft-age males in the Soviet Union.

Then in January 1984, "Krasnaya Zvezda,” the newspaper of the Soviet military establishment, called for the formation of “extraordinary anti-epi-demic commissions.”

In May, 1984, the military medical establishment was criticised in the Soviet press for lack of progress since 1981 and for the spread of acute intestinal infections — typhoid, cholera, viral hepatitis, dysentery and others.