Malaria is not only the greatest killer of humankind, the disease has been the relentless scourge of armies throughout history. Malaria thwarted the efforts of Alexander the Great to conquer India in the fourth century BC. Malaria frustrated the ambitions of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan to rule all Europe in the fourth and thirteenth centuries AD; and malaria stymied Napoleon Bonaparte’s plan to conquer Syria at the end of the eighteenth century. Malaria has also been the Australian Army’s continuing implacable foe in almost all its overseas deployments formation of the Australian Army in 1901. On at least three occasions malaria has halted Australian Army operations, bringing it to a standstill and threatening its defeat. The first time was in Syria in 1918, when a malaria epidemic cut a swathe through the Australian-led Desert Mounted Corps. The second time was in Papua New Guinea in 1942–43, when the Army was fighting malaria as well as the Japanese. The third time was in Vietnam in 1968, when malaria caused more casualties than did enemy action. Indeed the Australian Army has been fighting ‘an unending war’ against malaria ever since the Boer War at the end of the nineteenth century. The struggle against the disease continues 115 years later because virtually all Army’s overseas deployments are to malarious regions. Fortunately for Australian troops serving in nations where malaria is endemic, the Australian Army Malaria Institute undertakes the scientific research necessary to protect our service personnel against the disease. Ian Howie-Willis, in this very readable book, tells the dramatic story of the Army’s long and continuing struggle against malaria. It breaks new ground by showing how just one disease, malaria, is as much the serving soldier’s foe as any enemy force.

The official Australian casualty statistics suffered by the men of the Australian Imperial Force in the First World War are seriously wrong, with significant inaccuracies and omissions. Groundbreaking research exhaustively examining over 12,000 individual soldiers’ records has revealed that hospitalisations for wounding, illness and injury suffered by men of the AIF are five times greater than officially acknowledged today. Why has it taken nearly one hundred years for this to come to light? Was it a conspiracy to suppress the toll, incompetence of Australia’s official war historians Bean and Butler, or was it simply the unquestioning acceptance of the official record? You are invited on the journey in this book to find the truth. The findings are startling and will rewrite Australia’s casualty statistics of the First World War. Lest we forget.

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.