Against Epidemics

The state apparatus of the communist Czechoslovakia took care of the health of its staff members. Materials regarding sanitary and epidemiological matters can therefore be found in the Security Services Archive. For example, on 25 July 1955 the minister of the interior issued the mandatory regulation MV-zdrav-II-1 „Hygienické a protiepidemické zabezpečení v oboru ministerstva vnitra“ (Sanitary and Anti-epidemiological Measures within the Ministry of the Interior), which was supposed to regulate the most important tasks of the ministry’s medical care service in the area of protection against emergence and spreading of infectious diseases among the officials of the Ministry of the Interior, Public Security Corps and the Army Corps of the MoI.

The regulation also includes the inevitable portion of propaganda, as was usual in that period. Only healthy and immune employees could “secure the building up of socialism in times of the escalating class struggle, when they are subjected to increased requirements. The performance of service duties, as the regulation states, can be hampered or seriously threatened by the emergence of infectious diseases and occurrence of epidemics, and it is therefore important to adhere to the sanitary rules and prevent the spreading of infectious diseases among members of staff.”

This document also introduces the classification scale of epidemiological situations and what measures should be applied to prevent spreading of infectious diseases, who should undergo a quarantine or isolation, and which vaccinations were obligatory.

Collection A6/4 (Internal Organisation and Administration Department of the Federal MoI, Part 4), unit 225.