The health impacts of the First World War on New Zealand: a summary and a remaining research agenda

According to the Roll‐of‐Honour dataset for New Zealand military forces in the First World War, the last New Zealand soldiers “killed in action” in this war died on 7 November 1918, one hundred years ago this year of writing. They were Frank Gardner, Donald Stewart Kennedy, and Andrew Mather, who were all killed at Le Quesnoy in France. They died four days before the war officially ended and are buried at Cross Roads Cemetery, Fontaine‐au‐Bois, Nord, France. The centenary of these deaths and this war’s end seems an appropriate time to review its health impacts along with what might remain to be discovered about these impacts. To do this, we examined key official New Zealand history resources (NZ History, and Te Ara) and conducted PubMed searches. Search terms for the latter included combinations of: “world war”, “Zealand”, “ANZAC”, “Australasia”, “Gallipoli” and “pandemic influenza”. Searches were conducted on 19 January 2018.