Report on health services / Tanganyika.

  • Tanganyika. Medical Department.
Date:
[1959]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on health services / Tanganyika. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/118 (page 17)
    Malaria 83. All provinces report malaria as a continuing major cause of morbidity and, in the younger age groups, of mortality. The infection is widespread throughout the territory and although control measures limit its occurrence in the towns, in the rural areas its effects are significant. What the true incidence of the disease is it is not possible to elicit from hospital returns, as the tendency is widespread of attri¬ buting to malaria any febrile illness, the diagnosis of which is in doubt. Deaths from cerebral malaria were not uncommon, but once again very few cases of blackwater fever were reported. 84. The Malaria Division of the Department is responsible for the general supervision of anti-malaria work throughout the territory. The headquarters of the division was, until October, at Amani in the Tanga Province, a somewhat remote station in the mountains. It was, however, possible to transfer the unit to a more central headquarters at Morogoro and this move should greatly facilitate the super¬ visory work of the division and also, it is hoped, reduce transportation costs. The division, which has an establishment of one medical officer, two entomologists and five field officers, had available to it only the medical officer, one entomologist and two field officers. This shortage of staff necessitated considerable improvization, but useful work was nonetheless carried out. The staffing difficulties were further accentuated in August when it was decided to transfer the entomologist to work with a bilharzia investigation team established at the East African Institute for Medical Research, Mwanza. However, the training of a local officer as a malaria field officer was commenced and it should be possible in the near future to staff this cadre entirely from local resources. 85. Malaria control methods continued to be drainage and larviciding in settle¬ ments using Malariol high spread or B.H.C. powder, depending on the nature of the anopheline breeding site. In two areas of the territory large-scale residual spraying of houses was undertaken. At Mpanda the Malaria Division carried out another spraying cycle. The settlement, a heavily populated island of hyper- endemicity, surrounded by uninhabited tsetse bush was considered a suitable place for this type of malaria control, particularly as larviciding had only been partially successful on account of the large number of overgrown dams situated in the centre of the settlement. The results obtained from residual spraying were more effective than were the previous attempts at larval control and it was considered that in the special circumstances of Mpanda this method of malaria control was the one of choice. 86. The nuisance from culecine mosquitoes arising from the residual spraying to which reference was made in the previous report appeared to be abating during the year as the catches of culecine mosquitoes in houses were consistently lower than in the previous two years. 87. The other large-scale residual spraying scheme was that carried out in the Pare District by the staff of the East African Malaria Institute. During the year the sixth and final residual spray cycle was completed. This scheme, which commenced some four years ago, was aimed at interrupting malaria transmission solely by residual spraying. A review of results following the last cycle made it clear that although there had been a substantial reduction in the amount of malaria in the treated area transmission had not in fact been completely interrupted. Within six months of the commencement of the work all Anopheles junestus disappeared although this vector constituted half of the anopheline population before spraying commenced. In the swamp areas spraying appeared to have little impression on cattle-biting, outside-resting A. gambiae which maintained malaria transmission, particularly among young children, largely because in hot weather many people sleep outdoors and are bitten and are infected, although the anopheline vectors do