HC Deb 13 December 1911 vol 32 cc2477-8
Dr. CHAPPLE

I desire to call attention to the immediate importance of doing something drastic with regard to the spread of sleeping sickness in Nyasaland, and to the great waste of precious time that is involved in waiting for the Report of the Sleeping Sickness Commission, while this disease is spreading amongst the natives and the whites, and also amongst the domestic animals. I believe there is a remedy for this spread, and it should be taken at once. It would be useless for me to speak to-night if it were not possible for the Colonial Office to do something drastic, and to do it now in order to arrest the disease, and save the lives which are now being sacrificed. Sleeping sickness is spreading all over Nyasaland, and trypanosomiasis is spreading to the domestic animals, and killing them off. Sleeping sickness was introduced into the Congo so recently as about two years ago by the servant of a captain who went to the Congo. On his return he went to one of the lake towns, where there was no tsetse fly. He stayed there for some time, and went back to a place where there was palpalis tsetse fly, and shortly afterwards an epidemic of sleeping sickness started there. The fly known as glossina palpalis is the carrier of sleeping sickness in Uganda. A Boer general who fought against us in the war went recently into Nyasaland to hunt. He was bitten by the glossina morsitans in the neck, the neck suddenly swelled up, he contracted sleeping sickness, and he is now dead. Captain Hallam Hardy contracted sleeping sickness in Nyasaland and also died. A number of other whites and numerous natives have been dying there from sleeping sickness, and this statement is made in the official report which has just come to hand from Nyasaland:— The health of the native community has been quite satisfactory apart from the existence of sleeping sickness which has slowly extended during the last twelve months, in spite of every effort to arrest it. Not only is this disease spreading in Nyasaland amongst the natives, but trypanosomiasis is spreading amongst the domestic animals. It does not occur amongst game, which are immune from the disease, but the domestic animals—the dog, the horse, the cow, and the goat, are afflicted with the disease and die off. It is fatal to them, but non-fatal to game. A herd of 200 cattle is now reduced to eighty, and a small herd of seven is reduced to two. The result is that as the cattle die off there is no milk, which is a necessary food amongst natives who suffer from alimentary diseases. There is no ploughing, because oxen which are needed for ploughing the cotton fields die off wherever the tsetse is found.

Notice taken that forty Members were not present. House counted, and forty Members not being present,

The House was adjourned at four minutes before Ten of the clock, till to-morrow (Thursday).