Health impacts for New Zealand military personnel from the South African War of 1899-1902.

AIM

We aimed to update and provide more complete epidemiological information on the health impacts of the South African War on New Zealand military personnel.

METHODS

Mortality datasets were identified and analysed. Systematic searches were conducted to identify additional war-attributable deaths in the post-war period. To estimate the morbidity burden, we analysed a random sample of archival military files of 100 military personnel. Lifespan analyses of veterans included those by level of combat exposure (eg, a non-combat sample came from a troopship that arrived at the time the war ended).

RESULTS

We identified 10 additional war-attributable deaths (and removed three non-attributable deaths) to give a new New Zealand total of 239 war-attributable deaths. Given the average age of death of 26 years, this equates to the loss of 10,300 years of life. Most deaths (59%) were from disease rather than directly from the conflict (30%). Over a third (39%; 95%CI: 30%-49%) of personnel were estimated to have had some form of reported illness (26%) or injury (14%). The lifespan analysis of veterans suggested no substantive differences by exposure to combat (68.5 [combat] vs 69.1 years [non-combat]) and similarly when compared to a matched New Zealand male population.

CONCLUSIONS

The mortality burden was larger and the morbidity impacts on the New Zealand military personnel in this war were much more substantive than revealed in the prior historical literature. There is a need to more fully describe historical conflicts so that their adverse health impacts are properly understood.