SPREAD OF TYPHUS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 January 1942, Page 4

SPREAD OF TYPHUS

IN POLAND & UKRAINE EXTENSION OF EPIDEMIC LIKELY. RECOGNITION OF GENERAL DANGER. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, January 4. The Nazis, according to reports from neutral countries, are now facing a new and terrifying enemy

—the disease of typhus. In October at a council meeting of the Health Department in Poland a Dr Beurmann reported that the seasonal incidence of spotted typhus in the Warsaw district was considerably higher than usual, the chief source being the Jewish quarter. He went on to say that as the Polish doctors had shown themselves quite incapable of dealing with the situation the German administration had set up plague centres for disinfecting Jewish houses and for other preventive measures.

These precautions were intended to prevent disease from spreading to the German community and, even more dangerous, to the German Army. Like all hastily-improvised preventive measures they have been unsuccessful. The conditions created by the Germans in the countries they have conquered are so bad that the typhus has steadily gained ground. In November a police notice appeared in the “Danziger Vorposten” forbidding persons to congregate in the urban districts of Gdynia and making compulsory the notification of feverish complaints. By December the Germans had publicly recognised the general danger. Not only were whole districts in Poland isolated as a precaution, but also the German officials and settlers were especially warned that spotted typhus was as prevalent in the winter as in summer and were given a long list of measures they should take for their safety.

Simultaneously, Jewish doctors, nurses and sanitary workers in Warsaw were recalled and even allowed to work in the German hospitals. In the German-occupied Ukraine all schools have been closed indefinitely as “a serious epidemic has broken out.” The population of this territory and those of the Baltic States and north-eastern Poland have been forbidden to travel, and German officials and military arriving from these countries have to undergo a period of quarantine. Mobile delousing squads with special va’js are working hard in regions bordering on Russia where the Germans are organising winter quarters for their soldiers. Leave for both officers and men from the Eastern Front has been cancelled.

The conditions in Europe are such that in spite of the German vigilance the disease has every chance of spreading still further. Already it is reported to be raging in a number of Rumanian units stationed in the area of the Bug River. •