Public health practices in Germany under U.S. occupation (1945-1949); brief historical review.

Abstract

AN immediate problem which faced Military Government in the occupation of Germany was to maintain the public health, both for humanitarian reasons and to protect the health of the occupying forces. Bombed and partially destroyed cities, damaged water supplies, crowded dwellings, and hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, refugees, and expellees leaving and arriving daily, produced a constant threat of serious epidemics and especially of typhus fever. Our Military Government teams were staffed with public health specialists under the able leadership of Major General Morrison C. Stayer. In General Clay's words, their work in restoring conditions conducive to public health was little short of the miraculous. Immediate surveys showed shortages in hospital facilities, inadequate supplies of linen and bandages, and shortages of medicines. Hand in hand with the redevelopment of German public health, went the reopening of the pharmaceutical plants and the repair of hospitals with priority in materials. Meanwhile, the German personnel of the public health agencies, as well as the various health professions, had to be denazified. While the contagious diseases such as