INFECTIOUS HEPATITIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Abstract

Within the past two or three years infectious hepatitis has become recognized as an epidemic disease of increasing military importance.¹ Its prevalence among British troops in the Middle East has been high,² but it has not been limited to British forces or to that particular geographic area, for this disease has occurred in the armies of other allied nations; in the French army in Tunisia,³ in the Italian army in Sicily in 1941⁴ and in the German army⁵ as well as in the civilian population of Palestine.⁶ Outbreaks of what may be the same disease have also occurred in the civilian population of Scandinavia,⁷ England⁸ and America,⁹ but in the absence of diagnostic tests the relationship of infectious jaundice to so-called catarrhal jaundice¹⁰ as well as to various types of "epidemic jaundice" (with the exceptions of yellow fever and Weil's