PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O. 885
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
22 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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one from the other, there are few trees, and those are far apart. At Kikora, between Itoro and Kibangaya, there is, however, a fairly big tract of bush, much frequented by elephant, buffalo, and antelope. There is a good deal of swamp here in the rainy seasons, and there are several permanent water holes. One of these is near the road, and the tracks showed that it must be a regular drinking place for the game. The road is little frequented, as the population is small, and from the appearance seems chiefly to be used by the game. This kikora tract. of bush is thickly infested both with tsetse and with the common hæmatopota (H. hinta). The hæmatopota, however, it must be noted, extends in large numbers far beyond the limits of the apparent range of the tsetse right into the open grass country. This is a point of some interest, as will be seen later. There is another tract of bush to the west of Miduma, but I did not investigate its condition.
The well-known fly-belt on the Masindi-Kampala road, between Katugarukwa and Kibangaya, is also in just this kind of country, namely, thick or fairly thick bush with swampy parts which extend considerably during the rains.
The belt on the Masindi Port road exactly repeats the conditions just described. The cattle were examined all through the Kafu District from Miduma to Kahera, which is close to the Nile. The history of the country is as follows:-
In the time of Kaberego these plains were full of cattle. I obtained part of the information here recorded from an elderly herdsman who is now head muhima to Kabisolita, a relative of the present Makama of Bunyoro; he had herded for Kabisolita and other of the Makama's people since his boyhood. He described the herds as having been numerous, and having no illness, except a certain amount of a disease that seems, from his description, to be due to liver fluke; he described the distoma found in the liver very accurately. All the people through the district agreed in saying that the cattle were driven away at the end of Kaberego's reign, and that they did not die off from disease in the plains. There appears to have been quite three or four years during which there were no cattle at all in this part of the country. Somewhere about 1903 the chiefs and peasants began to buy small numbers in Bukedi, and from that time on cattle began to be kept again in the Kafu country, but the new herds were started from small nuclei of twos and threes.
There was no disease till 1908, ie., a date five years after the re-introduction of cattle, and four years previous to the date of its first appearance in the Bigando- Masindi country north of the uninhabited belt between the Kafu villages and the Bigando hills. The arrival of the disease in the Kafu country is dated by the history of Kabisolita's herd.
Kabisolita had three cows, bought in Bukedi in 1902 or 1903. They were herded at Nakitoma, in the Saza of Buruli in Uganda; that is to say, the cattle were kept some 20 miles or so on the southern side of the Kafu. These cows increased to a herd of some numbers by 1906, in which year they began to fall ill in the Nakitoma district, and were, therefore, moved to Kibangaya, in the Northern Province, just on the northern side of the Kafu River. The sick cattle in this herd died in about six months, and there was no further illness till about June in the year 1908, when all the herds in the Kafu District showed the disease one after the other. Now, there is no reasonable doubt that Kabisolita's herd, pasturing in country full of game, with tsetse in small numbers in the open grass plains, and in tremendous numbers in the Kikora bush only four or five miles away, must have been the source of the trouble. The fact that there was an interval of nearly two years between the arrival of Kabisolita's herd and the general infection of the district shows that the country at Kibangya was clean when Kabisolita's cattle were taken there; also the general history of all the other herds confirms this.
Mr. Eden, the Provincial Commissioner of the Northern Province, has very kindly confirmed the main features of the above account in regard to (1) the driving out of the cattle at the end of Kaberego's reign; (2) the absence of all cattle for, at the very least, three years; and (3) the arrival of Kabisolita's herd from Buruli in 1906. These constitute the crucial points in the foregoing evidence.
From the first introduction of cattle trypanosomiasis by this herd of Kabisolita in 1906, it took between five and six years to reach the country round and north of Masindi. But it is important to note that it took nearly two years to produce an efficient endemic reservoir in the Kafu District; moreover, owing to the mutual relations of the game and the morsitans, the short period of six years has sufficed to bring about a 10 per cent. infection of the fly throughout the Masindi fly-belts, even in places 10 to 12 miles from any domestic herds.
Now, while trypanosomiasis, owing to the presence of a large and increasing
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natural reservoir, cannot now be stamped out without putting into operation far- reaching measures which are difficult to carry out in so sparsely populated a district; nevertheless, cattle can be kept in the open grass country in spite of the presence of the disease.
Trypanosomiasis is now endemic, and a yearly toll of about 10 per cent. to 15 per cent. of all the cattle occurs and will continue to occur; nevertheless, in the face of this yearly loss, Kabisolita's herd, to choose a case in point, has, in 10 years, increased from a total of three to one of 43 without any new purchases having been made, and have afforded a useful revenue in milk and butter. Cattle are, however, the only realisable form of property possessed by people at this stage of development. The owners are perfectly willing to carry out recommendations, provided these are not too difficult nor too violently contrary to their natural prejudices. A little teaching in the matter of where to herd their cattle, and the periodic examination of herds and isolation of sick members, would be an obvious assistance. Isolation is not a very necessary or effective measure, but it is readily understood and acted on by natives, and psychologically prepares the way for the idea of slaughtering sick beasts. The slaughter of infected cattle would have to be enforced if trypano- somes of the gambiense-rhodesiense group appeared in the herds. Early cases, i.e., before emaciation has advanced too far, are perfectly wholesome as human food, and the owners might be persuaded to sell such individuals for slaughter. increase in the numbers of fly owing to a very wet season or from any other cause might, of course, at any time, carry off these herds. Still some attempt ought to be made to keep up the supply of milk and meat in the district.
An
The complete extinction of herds seems to be only a question of time in the case of bush country; bush with occasional swamps and large quantities of
game afford so good an environment for tsetse that, once the trypanosomes have become established in such a district, the cattle have really no chance. This is dramatically shown in two cases in the Northern Province, and the whole of Buruli is an expensive illustration on a large scale of the same fact.
The Northern Province cases are very clear.
(1) Katalicawa, an old chief, used to herd his cattle at Kiamugweri in the Bigando Hills; they showed a few cases of trypanosomiasis in 1912 and in February, 1913, he insisted on moving them down into the bush country a little to the north of the Masindi Port Road at mile 20. The other herds of his neighbour left at Kiamugweri showed 20 per cent. infected when examined in July, 1913. Katali- cawa's herd when examined also in July showed 50 per cent., and he had in addition lost 17 head in the month previous to my visit. He was herding the cattle in thick bush near the big swamp made by the Chwatilengo River. Katalicawa could not be brought to see that this was bad country for cattle as he had herded in this very place in his youth some thirty or so years previously and the cattle had thriven. The feed- ing conditions were certainly favourable enough were it not for the fly. At mile 26 on this road, just under Kigulia Hill at a place called Kitontoro where the bush is less thick and very much drier, I found a herd of 36 with only three cases of trypano- somiasis.
(2) In the Kafu District, Damali, another of the family of the Makama, had taken her cows to Kikora, which is bush country, at times very swampy and always full of tsetse. No illness occurred till 1908, when the infection first became general among the Kafu herds. In that year Damali had 40 head of cattle; they were kept at Kikora until March, 1913, when they were moved to Kibangaya. I examined them in August, 1913, and there were then only 14 left, of which 5 were infected. That is to say that Kabisolita's herd pastured in open grass. country steadily in creased in number in spite of yearly cases carrying off a certain percentage, while Damali's herd pastured only 4 or 5 miles away in bush country was reduced during the same period from 40 head to 9 healthy individuals; another season in the bush would probably have extinguished the herd.
T. virar seems to travel a little faster than T. pecorum in this district. T. vivax has got a few miles further north than 7. pecorum.
No evidence was found that T. pecorum was carried cyclically by either hæma. topota or tabanids. Chrysops was not met with, while on the other hand this try- panosome was unmistakably recovered (1) by injecting the proboscis forms of a Glossina morsitans infected in both gut and proboscis into a dog; the dog showed T. pecorum on the 14th day; (2) by feeding wild morsitans from the Masindi fly-belt on a clean monkey.