Annual medical and sanitary report / Uganda Protectorate.

  • Uganda Protectorate. Medical Department.
Date:
[1924]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual medical and sanitary report / Uganda Protectorate. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    34/78 (page 34)
    station since my last visit in 1919 is most marked and reflects great credit on the work of Drs. Vassallo and Griffin, the former of whom has worked unceasingly to lessen the well-known unhealthy and insanitary conditions of this station. Tanks.—A good deal of attention has been directed to these during the year as will be seen from the Mengo District report under anti-malarial work. The present type of cement Government tank has been proved to be a favourite breeding place of culex and stegomyia, and representations have been and are being made to get certain details altered so as to make them mosquito-proof. (B) Relapsing Fever. The increase in the number of cases treated at hospitals and dispensaries from 283 in 1923 to 852 in 1924 is due in some measure to the extension of sub-dispensaries in the Western Province which account for 157 cases, but is undoubtedly mostly caused by the largely increased movement of natives from the Northern and Western Provinces as a result of the importation of labour from these areas. The Western Province (with Masaka) accounts for 581 cases and the Northern Province (with Mubende) for 188. No cases were reported from the Gulu and Chua Districts of this Province. No evidence has been received that the disease is other than tick-borne. Special attention has been and is being laid on the necessity of all permanent or semi-permanent camps, e.g., police lines, labour camps, etc., being built with a view to preventing as far as possible their being tick-infested, and the replacement of the old type of police and prison warders’ mud and wattle huts by permanent quarters is being insisted upon in the townships in tick-infested areas. (C) Ankylostomiasis. The present position of this disease in Uganda is very fully commented upon by the Bacteriologist in his 1924 Deport. I am in complete agreement with the views expressed therein and am of opinion that the ordinary native villager living at home is not normally adversely affected by harbouring the parasite but that if any abnormal circumstances arise to upset the usual equilibrium, which has become established between host and parasite, then adverse effects on the host may become evident. I would cite in this connection two occasions on which the parasites seemed to me to have gained the ascendancy over their hosts, e.g., (1) during the Sleeping Sickness epidemic at Busu Camp in Busoga in 1908 when famine was also present in the district, and food to which the native of the district was unaccustomed, had to be imported both for the use of those in the camp and outside; (2) during an epidemic of diarrhoea in the Mbale Jail in 1913-14, in which the factors at work were overcrowding, famine in the district, insufficient clothing, general insanitary conditions, and to a certain extent unsuitable diet. Until fuller data have been collected regarding the effects of this disease on the Uganda native living under normal conditions in his village, which can only be done gradually as sub-dispensaries are extended into the various districts, I do not consider it advisable or practicable to attempt “mass treatment” and although attention is being given to the question of increased conservancy in native villages, particularly in the Eastern Province, improvement in this direction must necessarily be very slow, depending as it does mainly on the education of the native, which again can only take place as our staff increases and Medical Officers have more time for touring their districts. Epidemic Diseases. Plague. This disease has been confined to the Mengo District of the Buganda Province and to the Busoga and Lango Districts and the Bukedi area of the Eastern Province. The total cases reported were 887 with 801 deaths compared with 938 cases with 194 deaths in 1923. The figures for the last three years are given in the following table : — ' 1 Buganda Province Eastern Province Cases Deaths Cases Deaths 1922 178 153 1,184 1,152 1923 . . • • • • 111 95 827 818 1924 • • • 114 103 773 098