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Stamford Advocate · 5 May 1948

CP-1948-104

Typhoid Epidemic Is Feared In Arab-Packed City Of Acre

Associated Press, Acre, Palestine

Typhoid Epidemic Is Feared In Arab-Packed City Of Acre — Stamford Advocate, 5 May 1948
Stamford Advocate · 5 May 1948

Transcribed from the clipping

“Acre, Palestine, May 5. (AP)—Authorities expressed fear today of a typhoid epidemic. Eighty-two cases—46 of them British—already have been reported in this crowded city. A city official said the mayor and head of the Acre Health Department are in Lebanon appealing for serum to innoculate Acre’s 15,000 inhabitants. An Arab spokesman in Haifa said the Lebanese government had promised to send typhoid serum and a team of about 10 doctors and nurses to fight the disease. Forty of the British victims are soldiers from one company of the Middlesex regiment. The other six are constables… Ahmed Abdu, vice mayor of Acre, said that in addition to 36 known cases among the city’s civilians, another 50 persons are under observation. He complained there was no place in the hospital for typhoid victims. ‘We already have almost 200 wounded Arab soldiers under treatment,’ he said. Both Abdu and municipal engineer B. S. Behouth blamed the Acre water supply for the disease. They said British army tests showed the presence of typhoid germs in the water. Acre is located across the bay, eight miles from Haifa. After Jewish forces occupied Haifa two weeks ago, thousands of Arabs fled to Acre.”

Context added by this archive

Two weeks after Haifa, the town they were taken to is out of hospital beds and the water has typhoid in it. The vice mayor and the municipal engineer are named, and the last sentence says occupied and fled in the same breath. The subheading is “100 British Isolated.” “innoculate” is the paper’s.

Cite this item

"Typhoid Epidemic Is Feared In Arab-Packed City Of Acre," Stamford Advocate, 5 May 1948. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-104. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-104

Elsewhere in the archive

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-1948-104.

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