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A Report On The Vietnam War

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The Vietnam War started on November 1, 1955. 9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the Vietnam Era. Those that went into the war zone suffered, not only from wounds but also from a variety of jungle diseases and malnutrition. One of the few sources of clean water came from water purification tanks at Vietnamese refugee camps.Preventive medicine teams worked to control rodent and insect infestations, spray for malarial mosquitoes, and purify unclean water.

Navy medical personnel were able to stabilize and treat most casualties and perform minor surgery, but the more serious cases were medevaced to other treatment facilities in Japan or in the continental United States. A five-story, concrete building, located on Tran Hung Dao, was the Navy’s only hospital. From the day it opened, it began to receive American combat casualties directly from the field. In 1964, the Navy assigned Lieutenant Commander Bobbi Hovis, one of the first Navy nurses to volunteer for service in Vietnam, to Saigon. With her commanding officer and fellow nurses, Hovis helped set up Station Hospital Saigon. As she settled into the daily routine of providing medical care to U.S. military personnel, the security situation in South Vietnam’s capital changed dramatically.

Diseases accounted for a good deal of the hospital’s day-to-day work. Malaria was endemic and everyone had to take precaution. Infectious hepatitis was not uncommon, and all personnel had to receive immune globulin

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