Annual report of the Medical Department / Uganda Protectorate.

  • Uganda Protectorate. Medical Department.
Date:
[1950]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Medical Department / Uganda Protectorate. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    based upon surveys carried out by the Entomologist. Malarial survey work increased, visits being paid to most of the townships. A tsetse survey was carried out on Buvuma Island, and several thousand flies collected subsequently were identified. A survey of a suggested site for a leprosy settlement in Toro showed the presence of Glossina palpalis, and enabled further observations to be made on Simulium damnosum and onchocerciasis. A rat and flea survey carried out in connection with work on typhus around Kampala has demonstrated some interesting changes since the surveys undertaken by Hopkins in 1933-35. The ousting of the field rats by Rattus rattus has continued, and the latter now comprise 85% of the rats caught in huts within 10 miles of Kampala. Xenopsylla cheopis has almost completely replaced X. brasiliensis as the commonest rat flea found. The average number of X. cheopis found on each rat was 1-5 as against o • 1 at the previous survey. SECTION VI —TRAINING OF PERSONNEL Assistant Medical Officers Two important changes were made during 1950 to improve the training offered to medical students at the Makerere College Medical School. The organisation of clinical teaching, previously undertaken by Government clinical and pathological specialists, has now become the responsibility .of full-time college staff. All the beds in Mulago Hospital will be available for teaching purposes, and Government officers will continue to assist in the work. Some Government buildings at Mulago Hospital have been trans¬ ferred to Makerere College, including the pathology and anatomy buildings and laboratories. It is pleasant to record that the Professor of Medicine (Dr . A. W. Williams), the Lecturer in Pathology (Dr, J. N. P. Davies) and a Senior Laboratory Technician (Mr. T. N. Salthouse) are former members of this department who will continue to be associated with it in the course of their college work. The second change has been the lengthening of the curriculum from six years to seven. On this account, no students completed their studies during 1950. Two students referred in 1949 passed the examination for the Diploma in Medicine (blast Africa) during 1950, and one other whose entry into Government service had been deferred on account of illness was accepted at the end of the year. During the year, four Assistant Medical Officers were undertaking post-graduate studies in the United Kingdom; one gained the Diploma in Child Health and another the Diploma in Public Health. Mepical Assistants The course for Medical Assistants at the Masaka training school has been lengthened from two years to three now that candidates from secondarysj schools have replaced ex-army nursing orderlies. To bridge the consequent : gap in the production of trained staff, a special course of twelve months’- duration was given to selected candidates from the Government service: