Postwar Epidemics

Typhoid in Germany, reported UNRRA, was at 30 times its normal level in September. Syphilis had a "three-to-nine-fold increase in most countries and a 20-fold increase in Germany." Belgium was recovering from a polio epidemic. But the diseases that worry UNRRA most are 1) tuberculosis, which kills those weakened by exposure and starvation, 2) influenza, which has not yet hit in force (though many Berliners had it last week), 3) the strangely virulent diphtheria which struck hundreds of thousands of central and northern Europeans in 1942 and 1943 (TIME, June 4) and has not yet let up.

This form of diphtheria is just as apt to attack adults as children. Even those who have been inoculated are not safe. The disease now flourishes in The Netherlands (4,000 new cases in one month) and Bohemia (1,700 cases in a month) and has made a start in Japan (over 3,000 cases in Tokyo this year). Inoculation is still the best way to fight it, but neither UNRRA nor the Army inoculates civilians. A few countries have managed to inoculate their schoolchildren, but grownups everywhere are taking their risky chances.

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