EPIDEMICS ON THE MACEDONIAN FRONT (1916-1918)

Abstract

World War I, like the previous two Balkan wars, took place on two fronts on a larger or smaller scale.One fought fighting on the warfare sides, and the other front was fought with outbreaks of infectious diseases. TheBalkans, especially Macedonia, were also the hotspot of several epidemic waves during these years of war. Startingwith cholera in 1913. military forces and the local population, in the following years of war, almost simultaneouslyhit the epidemic of stomach typhoid, feedback fever, damn typhoid, and dysentery. In the wake of the militaryactions of the Macedonian Front, malaria was the most dangerous infectious disease in the ranks of all armies, adisease that was expressed in less or greater intensity in all years of war. Reports of the warred sides' sanitationreported a large percentage of the sick, but also a high percentage of measles. The victims of the end of the war in1918. will increase with the appearance of a flu epidemic known as Spanish fever (Spanish flu) that will take apandemic scale. A pandemic that will take about 50 million people worldwide between 1918 and 1919, significantlymore than the total number of victims in World War I. The role of the sanitation of the Balkan countries is great, butalso of the large number of foreign missions that dealt with this situation by assisting the military and localpopulations.