Sleeping sickness in Tanganyika, past, present and future

Importance has been laid on the study of epidemiology because without an exact knowledge of what is happening efforts at control and prevention must be to a certain extent blind even if effective. Such efforts may, too, sometimes be unnecessarily costly or restrictive merely because there is not the knowledge to say, for example, that in such and such a set of circumstances there is only such and such a degree of risk. Even so, summing up the present and looking to the future there is already a far better outlook than there once was for the person infected. There is also, coupled with this and due to the improvement in antitsetse techniques, the considerable reduction in the risk of being infected. These two factors, the lessened risk of infection and, if infected, the almost certain chance of cure, have brought with them the prospect of taking over and developing land hitherto closed to occupation because of the sleeping sickness risk. This is, as already mentioned, actually happening. Land, furthermore, can now be settled not at the old “100 people to the square mile” density, but at much lower figures allowing for mixed and stable agricultural and veterinary practice. New studies will certainly bring further improvements but even now the position is such that, given a sufficient number of people to use to the full a given area of land—this is all-important—they can be welcomed in any sleeping sickness area. With the full co-operation of the many technical departments involved, veterinary and agriculture, medicine, water, communications and the rest, there is an inviting challenge to be taken. One which, properly tackled, will bring not only the much sought-after increase in productivity, but with it, the eventual eradication of sleeping sickness.