THE OTHER WAR

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 65, Issue 5493, 3 July 1942, Page 3

THE OTHER WAR

FINE WORK OF HYGIENE SECTION COMBATING DISEASE (N.Z.E.F. Official News Service) (By Air Mail) CAIRO, 3rd May. Every morning in the New Zealanders’ base camp at Maadi a group of men set out at dawn and work till duA making war on disease and dirt are the men of the hygiene section who have given New Zealand camps a reputation for cleanliness, good sanitation and healthy living conditions. The men are specially trained, and in a quiet and unostentatious manner, they are doing a grand job. Old soldiers who were in Egypt during the last war will remember the hordes of persistent flies, which would appear anywhere, even in the middle of the desert, miles away from all habitation. Flies in Egypt still possess these annoyingly persistent habits: they are still harbingers of disease; but in New Zealand camps they are kept under control. It has been a long and ceaseless campaign. Breeding places inside and outside the camp area had to be eliminated and the soldiers themselves had to acquire new anti-fly habits. ANTI-MALARIAL CAMPAIGN To-day rubbish is burned in large incinerators and the little that cannot be so destroyed is deeply buried and oil sealed. Native villages are regularly inspected and rubbish burned under supervision. Constant propaganda in the form of lectures, posters, and newspaper articles have sought to teach the troops new habits. To-day, in Maadi Camp, there are hardly more flies than in the average New Zealand city suburb in summertime. As summer draws near the hygiene section turns its attention to the antimalarial campaign, against the mosquito. The main danger areas are outside the camp, but it has to be borne in mind that a mosquito can fly non-stop for several miles even against the wind. It is thus necessary to go into the villages and irrigated fields to drain stagnant pools and disinfect canals with Paris Green. A large number of native workers enter the base camp daily. There is always the possibility that they may bring infection. So with the co-oper-ation of the Egyptian Health Depart-

ment they are regularly inspected and disinfected when necessary. ALL WATER TREATED The camp is supplied with water from the Nile. It is treated in the Maadi waterworks and pumped throughout the camp area. The troops have a story that if a white man falls into the Nile he should have 57 injections to guard against infection.' However true this may be, drinking water has to be closely watched, and in spite of the careful treatment the water receives at the pumping station the hygiene section takes daily tests. The water in the camp swimming pool is also specially treated to prevent infection. A watchful eye is kept on the camp laundry, where, native women sit hour after hour washing clothes in large pans of hot, soapy water. Another branch of operations is at the N.A.A.F.I. establishments which serve food to the troops in the evening. These have had to conform to New Zealand standards of hygiene and their kitchens are carefully supervised. SYSTEM OF EVAPORATION On the left of the road on entering the camp, there is a series of shallow “pans,” about 20ft. square. These are evaporation pans. When drainage facilities for the camp were first planned it was discovered that water would not drain into the sand. It is a characteristic of the desert that rain water just lies on the surface in pools till it evaporates. Hence it was necessary to adopt the evaporation system of disposal of drainage water, whereby it flows through pipes to the pans and there evaporates. The drains do not carry non-soluble materials, which are held by grease traps at the intakes. These traps are cleaned out at regular intervals and the grease buried. In the last war disease took a heavy toll of our manpower, but the percentage of wastage due to disease in this war has been small. This economy has been achieved, greatly through the work of hygiene sections similar to the one in Maadi. They have applied to military camps the basic principles of public health and sanitation which are adopted in our own New Zealand cities.