Sanitary Reconnaissance

SANITARY RECONNAISSANCE, the totality of measures of the military sanitary service of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army for clarifying conditions affecting the sanitary state of troops and the organization of the work of the sanitary service itself. According to the objectives, one distinguishes between sanitary-epidemiological and sanitary-tactical reconnaissance. The object of sanitary-epidemiological reconnaissance is the sanitary properties of the terrain in which the troops are operating, and the state of the population with which the latter come into contact. In the num-

SANITARY DOG

60F

ber of pieces of information defining the sanitary properties of the terrain, besides general data on climate, soil, relief, atmospheric precipitation, etc., for sanitary reconnaissance, the characteristics of water bodies in a given area are of particular interest (especially considering the saturation of the most important sectors with troops in the conditions of modern warfare), and in individual cases, the fauna (e.g., the presence of the malaria mosquito). As for the population and populated areas, the most important data for sanitary reconnaissance are those on morbidity, especially infectious, and on possible paths of its spread, which pose a direct danger to the troops (housing, water supply and water usage, waste disposal). Sanitary-tactical reconnaissance is aimed at clarifying the conditions for organizing sanitary evacuation (staged, echeloned treatment) and the deployment of sanitary institutions (availability of suitable premises, local means for providing necessary property and inventory, installations for sanitary processing, means of local transport, etc.), as well as clarifying the state and capacity of communication routes (dirt roads, railways, waterways). Initial data for sanitary reconnaissance are contained in military-sanitary descriptions of regions, in particular, possible theaters of military operations; these descriptions are compiled in advance by the corresponding sanitary chiefs. However, data borrowed from such descriptions cannot be recognized as practically sufficient due to changes occurring in the state of the regions (in the conditions of the USSR—the scale of industrial and communal construction, the increase in the well-being and cultural level of the population, the laying of new roads, etc.). The existence of descriptions in no way weakens the importance of sanitary reconnaissance, which must ensure the continuous and timely receipt of reliable information by the military sanitary service. Some tasks of sanitary reconnaissance can be resolved by troop reconnaissance, when a dispatched reconnaissance organ (detachment, patrol) is tasked, along with other duties, with clarifying specific data important for sanitary support (e.g., the presence of sick people among the population, the number of wells, the presence of covered approaches for carrying out and transporting those injured in battle). A more effective measure is the inclusion in the composition of advanced units, as well as the departure with quartermasters of a military unit (formation), of medical personnel (a doctor, a medical assistant, a sanitary instructor—depending on the tasks of the sanitary reconnaissance) for personal examination of the terrain and population and for obtaining information from local civil administration or health authorities. With a view to supporting larger military formations, covering a more significant territory, and deepening the preliminary information obtained, sanitary reconnaissance employs all modern methods of studying the factors of the sanitary state, resorting, if necessary, to laboratory (chemical, bacteriological) research, to the collection of faunistic material, to the analysis of statistical data, etc. The results of sanitary reconnaissance, properly documented (report cards, summaries, diagrams), are used by the organs of the military sanitary service for conclusions about the sanitary assessment of the situation, presented to the command as one of the elements influencing the actions of the troops; on the other hand, they form the basis for developing a plan for supporting troops in sanitary-preventive and sanitary-evacuation respects. In the pre-revolutionary Russian army, sanitary reconnaissance did not have a systematic character, and its conduct was entirely dependent on the subjective qualities of the sanitary chiefs. On the contrary, in the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, sanitary reconnaissance is one of the very essential branches of the work of the military sanitary service and, as such, is regulated by the corresponding statutes and manuals.