Malaria In The Vietnam War

From Napoleon’s defensive action at Walcheren, to the Union Army’s attempts to take control of the Mississippi River at Corinth and Vicksburg, to the Dreadful numbers of malaria casualties suffered by U.S. Marines on Goudal Canal during the World War II and more recently in Vietnam, numerous people on the world died because of a catastrophic disease, malaria. Although the disease has now been given medical research by a lot of scientist from a lot of country thus a number of anti-malaria drugs have been created, it is still a harmful disease and still need more research to completely wipe it out. The effect of malaria cannot be showed through simple numerical data, so here we just talk about it effect in a specific historical period, the Vietnam War.

Countries which are involved in the Vietnam War are the United States and Vietnam. It is clear that a significant number of soldiers have died in the Vietnam War; so people might ask, what cause so many casualties? In 1996, the American Forces Press Service, in an article on malaria vaccine research, quoted Dr. Stephen L. Hoffman, a navy doctor at Naval Medical Research Institute, as saying, “In every military campaign this century, we lost more casualties to malaria than bullets”. Therefore, during the Vietnam War conflict, malaria became the leading cause of medical