History of Arbovirology: Memories from the Field: Volume II: Virus Family and Regional Perspectives, Molecular Biology and Pathogenesis by Nikos Vasilakis & Laura D. Kramer

Author:Nikos Vasilakis & Laura D. Kramer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031220036
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland

Having added a few further qualifications, Megaw added a last punch at ‘the dualists’, as he called them: ‘It is when they complicate the textbooks and confuse students and practitioners by long and unnecessary descriptions that it is essential to issue a definite challenge to them’.105 Nearly 30 years later, McCarthy and Bagster-Wilson (Royal Army Medical Corps) offered a useful elaboration: ‘The disease is amazingly varied in its clinical manifestations, with no predominant symptom recurring as a characteristic, each symptom apparently taking it turn as the dominant feature’.106

As noted above, Graham had identified the mosquito as the causal agent of dengue in 1903; MacCarthy and Bagster-Wilson were interested in controlling dengue infections in the East African Command in the late 1940s. Although dengue had been recognised on the East African Coast for many years, and occasional cases were diagnosed, no epidemic had been recorded. In March 1941, however, soon after the town of Mogadishu (Somalia) had been occupied by the British, a major outbreak occurred, with 72 hospital admissions and many more cases in May, further cases during the rest of the year and another peak in incidence in May 1941.107 A second major outbreak came in Diego Suarez (Madagascar) in June 1942, soon after the British occupied the port, and recurred in January to April 1943. The RAMC began using Aedes indices at Mogadishu in February 1942.108 Following the application of mosquito control measures in Mogadishu from mid-1942, dengue was effectively eradicated, ‘to a negligible level’, when the index fell to fewer than 10%.109 In Diego Suarez, however, that only happened when the index was less than 2%. Nevertheless, the control measures could not eradicate mosquito breeding in ‘the many roof gutters, three or four stories high, nor in the ‘multitude’ of holes in trees in the city streets and gardens. These were thought to be involved in the residual survival of dengue in 1944, but the disease finally disappeared after the tree holes were ‘treated’ later that year.110 In the mid-1940s, in the words of Scott Halstead, the modern era in dengue research began, and inoculation against dengue became a reality.111

World War II had wide-reaching effects on the Colonial Medical Services in Africa, because of the ‘vast operational scale of the war effort there’, but similar problems arose in most other Colonial territories, except India.112 Early in the war, many medical officers in the CMS were seconded or released for military service. In Africa nearly a quarter of the total establishment was released, including many of those with specialist qualifications or experience, and the main problems facing the staff that remained centred on ‘the intimate contacts created by air travel and, generally, by the movement of people from one place to another’.113 Yellow fever and malaria were the most important of these problems, together with venereal infections in the seaports. Under peacetime conditions, travel was regulated by International conventions, but the rapid deterioration in the international situation following the rise of Hitler and the annexation of the Sudetenland

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