The Tsetse-Fly Menace in Tropical Africa

Abstract

THE inauguration of a campaign against the tsetse--L fly in Tropical Africa is long overdue. Tropical Africa is becoming progressively important as a source of food-supply and raw materials for the Eurasian and American nations. The world at large, therefore, cannot contemplate with equanimity the domination by “fly” of a large proportion of the most fertile lands in the tropics. What is most disquieting, moreover, is the fact that the area under “fly” is increasing and not diminishing. Hitherto, no colonial government has either had the means or has considered it worth while to adopt methods for its extermination like those employed by Gorgas in the Panama Canal zone against the mosquito. Yet, in effect, the ravages due to glossinse are, in some respects, more deadly than those due to anophelines. Malaria has been largely robbed of its former terrors. It can be prevented and cured. But up to the present no certain preventive remedy has been found for human sleeping-sickness and animal trypanosomiasis, although cases of sleeping-sickness have been cured by atoxyl, Bayer “205,” or tryparsamide.