Malaria Prophylaxis in Kenya¹

Abstract

IN the years 1925, 1926, 1927 there were in Kenya at least 10, 10, and 5 deaths, and in Uganda at least 19, 48, and 22 deaths from blackwater fever in the respective years. This is a deplorable waste of life, for it may be regarded as axiomatic that malaria and blackwater fever are so closely connected that freedom from the former means absolute freedom from the latter. Blackwater fever to-day in Africa, as it did nearly a century ago, kills twenty-five in every hundred of those attacked, and yet, says Col. S. P. James in the report before us, “Several people told me, with obvious pride, that they had had two or more attacks of the latter disease” [blackwater] (p. 24). This century-long waste of life, in spite of the “obvious pride” of the ignorant, is a totally unnecessary sacrifice. It is unnecessary because malaria (and so blackwater) is a preventable disease, but now we are rejoiced to hear that this slaughter will cease in Kenya, for “the Governor had announced that it was his Government's intention to stamp out the disease” (malaria). With it will also disappear blackwater not only from among Europeans but also from among the Indians, of whom there are three times as many in Kenya as there are Europeans, and among whom the incidence and fatality of blackwater is surprisingly high (p. 29).