DYSENTERY AND FEVER

Northern Advocate, 24 October 1935, Page 4

DYSENTERY AND FEVER

ITALIANS INVALIDED HOME BEFORE HOSTILITIES COMMENCED. WHAT A VISITOR TO WHANGAREI WAS TOLD. All through the present Italo-Abys-sinian dispute there have been conflicting accounts of the numbers of killed and wounded on both sides, and reports that number’s of Italians have been invalided home owing to sickness have never been officially admitted by the Italians. ' Many people doubt any figures that have been given. . Today, however, a visitor to Whangarei confirmed the fact that large numbers of Italians have been sent home suffering from various tropical diseases, even before the campaign proper had commenced. Only a few week's before hostilities had begun, a friend, a private nurse who has just returned to New Zealand, was in Sicily, and while she was there 15,000 Italian soldiers from Africa were established on a nearby island, all suffering from dysentery and fever. They were not sent to the mainland, probably for the obvious reason of not desiring to alarm the general population. ,

■ In Sicily, local food supplies were only available at high prices, % and imported foodstuffs were practically unobtainable. The poorer people were suffering from this lack, with a consequent increase in disease.