In writing and conversation, I occasionally stumble across references to the risk of epidemics from war casualties. While never full explained, the argument seems to be as follows. In their wake, armed contests leave both civilian and military casualties. The local health system is overwhelmed caring for the living, let alone the dead, and so the bodies lie where they fell. As they decompose, the bodies spread disease to the living and in so doing create an epidemic. Is this possible?
No, war dead do not cause epidemics. It is an all too popular myth. As one public health expert said to me: There is nothing in a dead body that was not already there when they were living. Most diseases survive in dead bodies for only a short amount of time: two days for most diseases and six days for HIV. Plus, diseases do not gain new modes of transmission after their host dies. The risk of infection from corpses is small (mostly from bodily fluids) and limited to those physically handling the dead.
However, one caveat is worthy of note. A crude but effective form of biological warfare is the contamination of water sources by corpses (usually from an animal), thereby denying their use to the enemy. Why does this tactic work? Fecal matter from the corpse leaks into the water, contaminating it in the same way as stool from the living.
Christopher R. Albon is a political science Ph.D. specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
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Interesting, thanks.
Totally ignorant question – do natural disaster dead cause epidemics? You hear this trope expressed in relation to cyclones etc (I’m thinking of the aftermath of Nargis in particular), and I wonder if there are any reasons why this would hold true in that situation.
I wonder if this is only correct because the word “epidemic” has a specific and fairly extreme meaning to it. Surely corpses do not cause epidemics, but festering bodies are surely a fertile ground for bacteria and flies, no? It is common for the bowels of a corpse to relax and for fecal matter to leak out. I would think the flies can crawl around in this, bacteria can grow on it, and then the flies can carry the bacteria.
I was in Baghdad in 2003 and one problem that we had was that morgues (often co-located with hospitals) were brimming with corpses for weeks after the fighting stopped. The locals were pretty good about giving proper burials to strangers if someone was killed either by murder or by making the poor decision of engaging in a firefight with Americans. But, for some reason, there were morgues piled high with rotting corpses of people killed during the invasion of the city. I’ve been to mass graves in Bosnia – and the stench in Iraq was not quite that bad – but it was pretty ripe. I don’t know if this was an exaggeration or not, but the hospital workers complained to us that people in the vicinity were getting sick from it.
George Darroch: Disasters do not directly cause epidemics, however by weakening health systems and displacing populations they can remove the barriers to disease outbreaks.
TJM: You are right to worry about insects and rats. While corpses do not cause disease, large numbers can create a boom in the number of rats and other animals which carry disease.
The connection between corpses and disease was originally made because people found that clearing away the bodies prevented epidemics. They concluded it was the bodies that had caused the disease, however it was increased population of rats and other critters that was the true culprit. Remove the bodies –> the rat population goes down –> no epidemic.
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