PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O.885
19 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
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of Lake Bangweulu. His plan has been to start from the sources of the rivers and work towards the sleeping sickness area, and with the exception of the Lofu no Glossina palpalis was found to extend beyond the sleeping sickness area as defined last year.
A large section of the Lofu has now been included in the sleeping sickness
arca.
We are now able to state definitely that no Glossina pulpalis is to be found outside the sleeping sickness area, and Mr. Neave and myself have together examined over 7,000 people in the guard area this year with a negative result. This area has now been declared free from endemic sleeping sickness, and will be thrown open for transport and communication as far as the sleeping sickness boundary, but no labour is to be taken from those districts which for some years past have supplied labour to the Katanga country. These unstricts are: Luapula, Kalungwisi, Mweru, Mporokoso, Lutena, and Alercorn. In future any labour recruited except for local purposes must be accompanied by a certificate from the Native Commissioner stating the districts in which the natives reside.
All the measures recommended in my last report have now been put into effect, and if the basis on which these measures were formulated be a correct one, most of the difficulties of the problem in dealing with the disease may now be regarded as overcome, and in so far as measures that are practical and useful are concerned, there is little more to be done. The work done this year has shown us that the disease is limited to our Lorder, and if the measures adopted are efficiently carried out, and the regulations strictly enforced, there should be little or no danger of a general invasion of the territory. We can never hope to contend against the mechanical transmission of the disease by Glossina morsitans; the distribution of this fly, which I have already referred to in a previous memorandum, is so wide- spread that the shutting off of large portions of the country whether as sleeping sick- ness or guard areas would have no influence in checking the spread of the disease throughout the country; moreover, in the light of our present knowledge on the subject such measures are, in my opinion, not justified, as the whole of the country at once becomes implicated, creating a situation that could only be met by means of an enormous medical staff. If Glossina palpalis is the factor necessary for the establishment of endemic foci of the discase then we may reasonably expect the measures that have been adopted to eventually stamp it out. It will be two years before any definite results can be declared; in the meantime the work of investiga- tion and segregation must go steadily on, and if the incidence of the disease does not increase, we may still hope for good results in the end.
The Luapula has now been closed completely, the segregation camp at Madona has been moved to Fort Rosebery, and as soon as the population is moved away from the Luapula, Madona Station will be closed down. At Mweru the villages have been moved from the Lunchinda River, and clearings made on the lake shore at every village. Kilwa Island remains isolated, and numbers of the people there are settling on the other side of the lake. It is visited periodically both by the Native Commis- sioner and Medical Officer. Whether the measures carried out last year on the Luapula and Lake Mweru stayed the invasion of the disease I do not know. It would be premature to make a statement in regard to any measure that had not been in operation for quite two years; nevertheless, I regard Lake Tanganyika where, until my arrival there this year, practically nothing had been done, as the most dangerous part of the border at present. During my investigations on the lake this year four more cases of sleeping sickness were found which, with 16 cases found by the Liverpool School Commission, bring the total number on the lake to 33. The difficulties on Tanganyika are the more formidable by reason of the formation of the country causing communication between various parts of the shore-other than by water-to be slow and laborious. From Sumbu to the east side of the lake is a journey of 80 to 100 miles, which has to be done for the most part on foot, and takes five to six days. It was at once evident how impossible it was without steamer com- munication to control the lake shore from Sumbu, which, moreover, is shut off from the south and east sides of the lake by a precipitous escarpment which falls abruptly for some 2,000 feet right to the water's edge rendering the lake shore for a distance of 20 miles almost inaccessible by land. The Native Commissioner has hitherto trusted to canoes, but this means of conveyance with the high wind and frequent squalls so prevalent on this lake is, as I have reason to know, not unattended with dangers.
The station is now practically abandoned, and as soon as the work on the
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lake shore is done the Native Commissioner will make his headquarters at the old station of Katwe, and the cases of sleeping sickness which were temporarily segregated there have been taken to Abercorn, where all the cases on the lake are now segregated.
That Lake Tanganyika is heavily infected in other parts there can be no doubt Kala, a French mission station 30 miles north of Bismarkburg is decimated, and at another mission station, Pala, on the opposite (Belgian) side of the lake, where the disease has been raging for 3 years, the population is now annihilated. Several hundreds of cases are now segregated at Nyanji (?), north of Udjiji, and the disease is known to be present at Usumbura and Bismarkburg, on the German side, and at Moliro, Vua, Baudoinville, Pla, and Uvira, on the Belgian side. These parts of the lake-shore have not yet been systematically investigated, so that figures are not available, but the number of cases on the lake must run into thousands. With Glossina palpalis so thickly distributed along every part of the coast, round every island, and along every little stream running into the lake, there can be no question that in the course of a few years our population would be decimated too. The people moved from the lake and the valley of the Lofu number between six and seven thousand, and of this number no less than 20 per cent. would probably become infected if left where they are. By the end of the year the whole of the lake-shoro should be completely depopulated, leaving only a few messenger posts here and there to see that communication is not maintained. Most of the villages will be so situated far away in the hills as to almost preclude the possibility of this, and, moreover, all the canoes have been taken over.
The chiefs and headmen have been given to understand that it is for their own good that they are moving their villages; the movement therefore is a voluntary one, costing the Administration nothing but a loss of revenue, which would occur in any case. "In view of the large expenditure which may eventually be saved by such a policy, a few hundred pounds spent by the Administration to expedite the scheme would be well expended. It is perhaps necessary to point out that the people in the sleeping sickness area, numbering probably about 30,000 now, have never been a regular "tax-paying" population, and a large percentage, especially those living close to the border, never paid taxes at all, so that the loss in revenue is not so great as it would at first appear, and now that the guard area is available for transport and local labour, the loss in revenue ought now to be less. In the course of time, as villages now situated in the sleeping sickness area prove themselves beyond a doubt free from any infection, they will be allowed to cross over and settle in clean country, and so be available for labour and taxation; thus, if the measures adopted meet with any success the loss in revenue will tend, as time goes on, to become less and less as the population in the sleeping sickness area becomes year by year attenuated. This will form part of the work of the medical officers, but will not be done to any extent until considerable time has been allowed to lapse.
I wish to record here the excellent work done by Mr. Wenham in the Mweru district up to the time of his retirement in May last, and to thank the members of the Liverpool School Commission for much useful information concerning their work-always generously proffered-and for the full notes of all their cases, which they were kind enough to hand over to me.
Fort Jameson,
6 October, 1908.
APPENDIX.
J. C. SPILLANE,
Principal Medical Officer.
RETURN OF CASES OF SLEEPING SICKNESS IN NORTH-EASTERN RHODESIA.
Total.
Increase.
Lunpula
Mwatu.
Tanganyika.
1907
3
11
13
1308
9
13
33
55
28
Decrease.
32655
K 1