Malaria in Czechoslovakia after World War II

Abstract

Before World War II malaria was known only in the south-eastern countries of Europe. The territory afflicted with malaria spread from the Balkan region along the Danube and the Theiss rivers through Hungary to the south-eastern corner of Czechoslovakia, enclosing the southern tip of Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Systematic zoological investigations (Breindl and Komarek, 1940) have shown that anopheline mosquitoes live in Czechoslovakia, always in the plains and in the lower hilly territory. Two spp., A. bifurcatus (claviger) and A. maculipennis were found, the latter in two varieties, A. maculipennis typicus and A. maculipennis messae. These mosquitoes live in free nature only exceptionally. They are mostly encountered in warm and quiet stables and, sometimes, in human dwellings. Malaria was unknown in the western parts of Czechoslovakia since the 1850's (Pelnar, 1940). At the end of World War II, due to the considerable shifting of the civilian population and military troops, and also because of the changing epidemiological conditions in the war-torn counties, cases of malaria recently occurred also in the western districts of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovak medical journals published reports of a few instances of malaria which were diagnosed immediately after World War II in two territories which are quite apart from each other: (1) in Southern Moravia, (2) in North-western Bohemia. (1) The territory of Southern Moravia afflicted with malaria is a flat, richly irrigated agricultural country. Some parts of this territory were badly damaged during the fighting in the Spring of 1945. Due to the large-scale devastation of stables and extermination of cattle, the mosquitoes have lost their predominantly zoophilic character and have found new hosts in the local population and the fighting armies. The German Army withdrew through Moravia, followed by the Russian Army which contained units of the Rumanian Army from the highly endemic Balkan territories. Many soldiers harbored malarial parasites and infected the mosquitoes which transferred the plasmodia to the local civilian population. In addition, the destroyed sewage and irrigation systems, as well as the numerous bomb craters filled with water during the spring floods became excellent mosquito breeding places during the hot summer. (2) The second area, in the north-western part of Bohemia, had a different source of infection. This territory is a lignitic coal mining district with many shallow shafts. Numerous deserted and sunken mines harbor undisturbed water pools which are strongly infested with mosquitoes. A great factory for the production of synthetic petrol was built in this territory during the war and laborers, including prisoners of war, were brought from all parts of Europe to work in it. Many of these workers came from the Balkan region and from Italy. Numerous persons ,among them represented untreated malarial subjects from Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Italy, Greece and the Ukraine, who became the source of infection for the local population.