Tsetse flies and Trypanosomiasis. Some questions suggested by the later history of the sleeping sickness epidemic in Uganda Protectorate

Abstract

The actual commencement of the great wave of human trypanosomiasis, which claimed so many thousands of lives along the shores of Lake Victoria, is difficult to determine. The attention of Europeans was first attracted to the disease early in 1901, when eight cases of sleeping sickness were admitted to Mengo hospital by the Drs Cook, who had been established in Uganda some five years, to whom the clinical picture was quite new. Enquiry among the chiefs of Buganda revealed the fact that sleeping sickness was known to the natives as mongota, and was more prevalent in the eastern portion of the Protectorate than in Buganda itself. A large number of deaths had already occurred in Busoga Province and in Buvuma Island.