Annual report of the Medical Department / Tanganyika Territory.

  • Tanganyika. Medical Department
Date:
[1944]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Medical Department / Tanganyika Territory. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    119. Smallpox.—Variola-varioloid disease gave considerable concern, a total of 5,735 cases with thirty-eight deaths having been reported, compared with 201 cases with two deaths in 1943. It wili be remembered that infection wras introduced to the Territory across our northern border in 1943 but was of non-fatal type. With the exception of a small outbreak with unusual features on the southern shore of Lake Victoria the disease was again of non- fatal type and was frequently reported as alastrim. 120. In the Western Province the outbreak reported in 1943 ended in the first months of 1944 ; forty-one cases had been reported by the end of 1943 and 288 in the first four months of 1944. A second wave appeared in Septem¬ ber ; there were no deaths and the outbreak did not spread within the Province beyond the borders of eastern Nzega. Sporadic cases occurred in Kasulu and Kigoma. 121. In the Tanga Province infection was introduced by labour returning to the Usambaras from the plains and by African soldiers coming on leave. 546 cases with one death were reported, and the disease was stated to have been mild. 122. In the Southern Highlands a vaccination campaign on our side of the Bhodesian border confined the disease to small and quickly-controlled pockets. 123. In the Eastern Province 46 cases (none fatal) occurred in Par es Salaam. In Morogoro District 860 cases of a mild type with one certain and twelve rumoured but unconfirmed deaths were reported. 124. Some 231,000 vaccinations were carried out in the Central Province where 222 cases with eight deaths in infants and old people occurred, chiefly in Singida and Ivondoa districts. 125. But infection which constituted an outstanding feature of the year occurred in the Lake Province and, though there was little mortality, great embarrassment was caused; and because of the appearance in a single small area of a focus of virulent and fatal disease still under investigation at the end of the year, while the remainder was of non-fatal type though widely dispersed, it has been thought necessary to record the sequence of events more fully than usual. 126. A mild form of the disease, variously assumed to have been imported over the Uganda border or to have been introduced by soldiers on leave or by a woman returning to Maruku from Nairobi, was occurring round Bukoba in April; at Tinde in the south of Shinyanga District a small focus which did not expand had appeared, preusmed to be an extension from a larger outbreak in the Western Province near Nzega ; further foci had been reported from Geita Mine in the extreme west of Mwanza, and from Nyanguge on Speke Gulf some thirty miles east of Mwanza; these latter cases, though their character were those of smallpox, showed amazing mildness; they started with a case who had come from the Nzega area-. This outbreak, as a result of the need for curtailing the vaccination campaign, spread eastwards to northern Maswa and westwards to Kwimba. A further outbreak occurred in the southern part of the Maswa District but this was thought to have originated from the Western Province by way of the cattle route to Arusha. 127. A further introduction to Bukoba District is thought to have occurred in March with a cattle driver from Biharamulo who camped at Kabirizi in western Kianja. This outbreak linked up with the first one and spread south¬ wards also down the Kamachumu-Karambi road.