Australian malariology during World War II (Part 3 of ‘Pioneers of Australian military malariology’)

摘要

The rapid Japanese advance across South East Asia and through the archipelagos of the South West Pacific in late 1941 and early 1942 effectively isolated Australia and New Zealand. The lines of communication with their principal Allies, the UK and the USA, lengthened and became more hazardous. Further, the cinchona plantations of the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) came under Japanese control. Until then the plantations had been the source of most of the world’s supplies of quinine, the principal anti-malarial drug,.