Military preventive medicine support: The Balkan experience

Preventive medicine (PVNTMED) support to deployed forces is as varied as th e circumstances for force deployment. The Bosnia-Herzegovina deployment of the Ist Armored Division as part of the Dayton Peace Accords implementation Forces proved to be no exception to this premise, PVNTMED units, both in t he field and at the U.S. Army-Europe support base, were challenged to provi de mission support under significant mobility restrictions and in arenas of public health practice not previously thought to be of tactical significan ce, specifically environmental pollution. New to this operation was the dep loyment of a Theater Army Medical Laboratory with a mission to assist deplo yed PVNTMED units with the capability to rapidly diagnose infectious diseas e agents and provide an expanded array of environmental monitoring support. Vector-borne diseases were also a threat to health, and an innovative base camp sanitation assessment and reporting system was created to alert leade rs to the risk of disease transmission to soldiers.