🦠 Mystery Illness in the Dhala Valley

February 1944. A doctor investigates. And my mother, another doctor, investigates the investigation.

This is the description of an epidemic which commenced in the Dhala valley near the Yemen border in August 1943 and which is continuing.

I abridge a presentation written and presented by my mum, Dr. Áine McCoy, to the Wellington Medical Historical Society.

This report, entitled Secret. Social Conditions in The Dhala Valley February 1944, has lain in my family files for many years. I thought it was time that it saw the light of day again and that this would be a most suitable forum for it.

The investigation was undertaken by my uncle Dr John Henry McCoy in 1944 while he was stationed as a Medical Officer in the RAF in Aden.

Jack was born in Ballymoney, County Antrim Ulster in 1913, before the country was divided into North and South, in May 1921.

Jack – as our family called him - qualified at Queens University Belfast in 1936 and he spent the next four years in resident posts in biochemistry, bacteriology and serology at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.

He obtained his DPH [Diploma o…