Military doctors urge awareness of Africa ailments

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Military doctors urge awareness of Africa ailments
By Steve Mraz, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Wednesday, April 23, 2008

In a continent rife with disease, Africa has perhaps no two more frightening ailments than HIV/AIDS and Ebola.

But those fatal, headline-grabbing diseases are not the main threats to U.S. troops operating in Africa, U.S. military doctors say.

It’s the “non-sexy” illnesses — malaria, bacterial ailments such as diarrhea and respiratory transmitted diseases such as meningitis — that pose the greatest risks to American servicemembers in Africa.

“Three very non-sexy ones, which could commonly occur given what we do down there,” said Army Lt. Col. (Dr.) John Maza, chief of epidemiology at the Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine-Europe. “Ebola, Marburg (a severe form of hemorrhagic fever) and AIDS — we shouldn’t be getting because we shouldn’t be doing those things.”

With the recent creation of Africa Command, the U.S. military is showing a more focused effort on Africa. Undoubtedly, U.S. troops will continue to deploy to the continent well into the future and risk contracting the bevy of diseases found there.


Rest of Africom article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=54256