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The Entomological Aspects of an Outbreak Of Sleeping Sickness near Mwanza, Tanganyika Territory*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2009

C. F. M Swynnerton
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Extract

Information volunteered by Salim, the native headman of Basheshi, near Maswa, drew attention to the outbreak of sleeping sickness here described late in February 1922.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Bulletin of Entomological Research , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , November 1922 , pp. 317 - 370
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1922

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References

page 346 note * While correcting the proofs of this paper I have been shown by Dr. Newham a war-time report (I believe unpublished) by Wolff, the German investigator, in which the following passage occurs: “The large bodies of troops and porters have carried infection to districts formerly unaffected. I discovered three sleeping sickness patients in Mwanza District among a small number of Belgian askaris who were prisoners of war, and of these one reported that he was infected with his illness and had already been treated for it in the Congo and come there in a condition to infect other districts. After this demonstration it must be admitted that a considerable number of the Belgian natives will have carried the disease through a large portion of German East Africa. All prevention and control have ceased since the beginning of the war.”

The period of the war at which these prisoners were taken is not indicated (Neuman took Belgian prisoners), nor is anything said of the trypanosome, but the record is valuable and suggestive nevertheless. It also reinforces my argument in Sect. XX.

page 351 note * With a trypanosome pathogenic to man already present, any bite from a fly which had shortly before bitten an infected person and picked up trypanosomes might be expected to be capable of infecting a sufficiently susceptible person; and it is possible that such infections, and infections of a cyclical nature, often take place with game present; but the persistent biting by many flies that results from hunger in the absence of game would render infection more likely even for the probably somewhat resistant native by greatly increasing the number of trypanosomes injected.

page 360 note * An exception, south-east of Shirati, has been reported by Dr. Davey (v. p. 328 of this paper). It might repay investigation.

page 363 note * Mr. C. W. Hobley, C.M.G., who has had exceptional experience of native administration and was also in charge of the Nyanza Province during the great epidemic on the Lake, has very kindly read the proofs of this portion of the paper with a view to criticism. He regards the scheme as being on sound lines and suggests, for country in which the streams dry up, the inducement that would be offered by the erection of a few dams and, beside open “mbugas” in which the people would be settled first, the sinking of wells. Goats would be farmed first. Cattle would follow when it was perfectly safe for them to do so and the clearings would eventually coalesce.

This adds useful detail to the idea of “large locations” as centres from which to invade the surrounding tsetse-country, and it is possible that the settlement of little more than the mbugas alone would, as I have suggested under “Precise Measures,” at once banish the tsetse.