Photos: War and Disease Often Go Hand in Hand - The Wall Street Journal

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the latest example, coming in the midst of a global pandemic and heightening the risk of Covid-19 exposure for soldiers and civilians, said Sylvie Briand of the World Health Organization.

At one time, disease regularly killed more soldiers than conflict.

Some two-thirds of the 750,000 soldiers who are estimated to have died in the Civil War were killed by diseases rather than in battle, said Michele Barry, professor of global health at Stanford University.

Despite being called the Spanish flu, the influenza that spread around the world may have been first identified in the U.S.

A doctor in Kansas, Loring Miner, was the first to describe symptoms of what was later identified as an influenza virus that killed millions world-wide.

Universal History Archive/Getty Images.

Once scientists discovered influenza was caused by a virus, they began developing a vaccine in the 1940s.

Bettman Archive/Getty Images.

Aaref Watad/AFP/Getty Images

Aaref Watad/AFP/Getty Images