[The fight against dysentery, typhus and typhoid by Polish underground between 1941-1944].
Between 1941 and 1944 the Polish Home Army sanitary service was well prepared for the fight against infections diseases. The underground in so called General Government was both well organised and unimerous (nearly 350,000). The medical staff consisted of army doctors not taken prisoner, and civilians who as reserve officers were sworn to serve in the Home Army. Students from both elementary and secondary schools acted as undercover nurses having been prepared for the job by girl guides organisation. The main infections diseases were dysentery typhus and typhoid. Other diseases were rather rare during the World War Two. Since majority of population had been inoculated, the partisans needed only boosters. The typhoid spread in winters of 1941-42 and 1942-43 to the cast of the Vistula. Infections centres were isolated yet only the German part of population was inoculated by Weigl method. Since the vaccine was both expensive and hard to get only the Polish a staff officers of the Home Army and some doctors were inoculated. The epidemics of dysentery was particularly dangerous in August and September 1944 in the Kampinos Group during the Warsaw Uprising. In the barns of six villages in Kampinos there were 1190 sick partisans. Small amounts of medicines were parachuted by Polish Air Force from Italy. Therefor the chief medical officer recommended each patient drink a glass of bovine blood daily. This decreased mortality to nearly a zero.
Wankiewicz
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D003140:Communicable Disease Control; D004403:Dysentery; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008887:Military Medicine; D011044:Poland; D014435:Typhoid Fever; D014437:Typhus, Endemic Flea-Borne; D014857:Warfare
Bekämpfung der Ruhr, Fleck- und Abdominaltyphus durch polnische Untergrundarmee in Jahren 1941-1944.