Title: War Surgery and Medicine

Author: Stout, T. Duncan M.

Publication details: Historical Publications Branch, 1954, Wellington

Part of: The Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–1945

This text is the subject of: ‘Something of Them Is Here Recorded’: Official History in New Zealand

Conditions of use

Share:

General

The system of sanitation established in Maadi Camp in 1940 remained practically unchanged throughout the war.

Details of sanitation arrangements at Maadi Camp have been set out fairly fully, but the same treatment cannot be accorded all the places to which the Division or bodies of New Zealand troops moved. It was in Maadi Camp that the bulk of soldiers of 2 NZEF learnt the principles of hygiene, and where they learnt to apply them. It was there that most of them became acclimatised to life in the Middle East and North Africa, and where they became ‘salted’, suffering attacks of enteritis and other mild diseases which conferred upon them a degree of immunity to infections almost inseparable from life in Egypt and other foreign countries. It should be noted that preventive inoculations for typhoid, paratyphoid, tetanus, and smallpox, which were begun in New Zealand and on the troopships, were continued in Egypt and they conferred a high degree of immunity from these diseases.