Yellow fever in the Gambia / by G.M. Findlay and T.H. Davey.

  • Findlay, G. M.
Date:
1936
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Yellow fever in the Gambia / by G.M. Findlay and T.H. Davey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with yellow fever virus and immune serum. At that time his serum protected in a dilution of 1 in 128. The evidence thus suggests that among Europeans the outbreak was more extensive than was at first suspected. The same appears to have been true also in the case of Africans. Four African servants, employed by G.P. (Case 4), were found to have suffered during October and November from febrile attacks with headache and vomiting. G.P.’s personal servant, who was thought to have suffered from influenza, was personally tended by his master. He and his three fellow servants all showed immune bodies to yellow fever in their bloods. In the same way an African servant in the employ of two of the suspected cases was also found to have suffered from “ fever ” in November. He, too, protected against yellow fever. In order to throw further light on contact infection, sera were examined from eleven young adult Africans who either had suffered from fever during the previous year or during the same period had been in close contact with a fatal case of acute illness. Of these eleven Africans, five showed immune bodies to yellow fever in the blood serum. Thus, including V.R., of seventeen Africans who had either suffered from undiagnosed fever during 1934, or had been in contact with a fatal case of acute illness, eleven or 64-7 per cent, protected against yellow fever. As controls to this series, bloods were obtained from twenty Africans, permanent residents of Bathurst, 18 to 40 years of age, who had not suffered from any illness during 1934 and as far as they knew, had not been in contact with any acute illness ; eight or 40 per cent, protected against yellow fever. The figures both for adult contacts and controls are thus higher than those obtained by Beeuwkes and Mahaffy (1934) who found that among twenty- three children from Bathurst six or 26 per cent, were positive, the youngest positive donor being 5 years of age. Yellow Fever in the Gambia Protectorate. While recurrent outbreaks of yellow fever have been a feature of the history of Bathurst since its foundation 120 years ago, no epidemic of yellow fever has been recorded in the same period in the Protectorate. In 1860, however, three medical officers are said to have died from fever in the same house at MacCarthy Island after 5 days illness; and in 1911, Flourens (1913) records that two customs officials died in French territory on the frontier of the Gambia. Evidence that yellow fever is certainly endemic in many villages in French Senegal, in the neighbourhood of the Gambia, was provided by the survey conducted by Stefanopoulo (1933) who found positive sera in Saboya in Senegal not far from the northern frontier of the Gambia. Beeuwkes and Mahaffy (1934) also found that of fourteen adults from Georgetown 35 per cent, were positive, while of thirty-one bloods from children
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