Field Hygiene and Sanitation

Field hygiene and sanitation are two facets of military medicine that seek to ensure reduction of casualty through avoidance of non-combat related health issues among military personnel, particularly in the prevention of disease. As such it encompasses prevention of communicable diseases, promotes personal hygiene, ensures adequate field water supply, supervises food sanitation, administers waste disposal, controls, prevents and combats insect-borne diseases: mosquito, louse, fly, fleas, ticks, and mites, and other insects. Field hygiene control also includes knowledge and avoidance of venomous animals and their control, rodent-borne diseases and their control, control of leeches, and other miscellaneous diseases, or health problems related to extreme temperature environments. Lack of field hygiene and sanitation were major contributors to non-combat related casualty and death in pre-modern field armies, and continued to remain as serious threats to soldier health in modern warfare during the First World War, on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, in the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Field hygiene and sanitation are also major medical problems and causes of death among the World refugee populations.