Annual report of the Department of Public Health / Union of South Africa.

  • South Africa. Department of Health.
Date:
[1925]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Department of Public Health / Union of South Africa. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/54 (page 13)
    Warning notices were again widely published, and a circular issued urging on all concerned the necessity for thorough disinfection of all shaving-brushes. 3. Bilharsiosis (Schistosomiasis).—Bilharzia! infection of various species of fresh-water snails is endemic and occurs over a wide area of the Union, a hundred-mile wide coastal belt, fiom Knysna eastward to Lourenco Marques, representing, roughly, the portions of the Cape Province. Natal, and Zululand affected. All the Union north of a lii e drawn from Lourenco Marques to Lichtenburg and beyond may also be considered as infected or potentially infected. Throughout the areas thus described, snails belonging to the species Physopsis africana, Isidorei tropica, and Limnea natalensis have been found infected with bilharzia larvae, and similarly human sufferers from the disease are found. Schistosoma haematobium or ‘k human redwater ” is the form usually met with, but during recent years occasional cases of infection with Schistosoma mansoni, a parasite which affects the human intestii e, have also been found both in man and the snail-host, in areas as wide apart as Durban and Brakpan. This latter form has probably been introduced into this country either by soldiers infected in Egypt during the Great War or by natives from the East Coast. The disease is not a dangerous one as a rule, but cases of death from invasion of the brain, lungs, appendix, liver, kidneys, or other organs by bilharzia eggs have been reported. Sufferers are usually children and young adults who have bathed or waded in slow-flowing streams or in pools infested with infected snails. Infection is also conveyed by drinking water containing larvae ('k Cercariae ’ ) out of these snails. Infection of snails occurs within a few hou:s alter the urine of a person suffering from “ redwater ” is mixed with water in a pool or sluggish stream in which these snails are found. Develop¬ ment takes place in the snail for about six weeks, when many two-tailed minute cercariae appear ; these swim about, and unless they meet within forty-eight hours with a susceptible host, such as man, they die. They attach themselves to the skin of any person wading or bathing in the water, bore their way through the skin and enter a blood-vessel, eventually coming to rest in the liver or mesenteric veins. Here they develop into male and female worms, and within two months after infection may produce eggs which escape in the urine of the host. Snails once infected remain infected for life and produce successive crops of parasites. Preventive measures include educative propaganda of scholars and the general public, and warning-notices by local authorities against bathing, etc., in pools or streams known to be infected within their areas. Action against snails is most valuable, by means of clearing away aquatic vegetation from the edges of pools, dams, slow flowing streams and rivers or lagoons on which snails feed. The keeping and protection of domestic and wild ducks and other waterfowl which feed on snails is most useful and should be encouraged in every way. In swimming baths or ponds the addition of coppei sulphate in the proportion of one part to one or two hundred thousand will kill both the larvae and the snails. Drainage and prolonged drying out of ponds and pools will kill snails. Persons who are infected are bilharzia “ carriers and a danger to th e community. They should all receive early curative treatment from a doctor by means of intravenous or subcutaneous injections of tartar emetic or emetine lasting for not less than four weeks. Healthy persons should avoid bathing, wading, or washing in any pool or sluggish stream in the infected areas mentioned above, and should boil all drinking -water derived from such sources.