杏吧原创

Driving out the tsetse fly

The fertile lands that run down to the shores of Lake Victoria in the south of the Busogo district of Uganda have been closed off by the tsetse fly since 1900. The insect, the cause of the deadly illness sleeping sickness, had infested the region to such a point where it had become uninhabitable for humans.

Now the territory is gradually being reopened thanks to the initiative of the East African Trypanosomiasis Research Organisation (EATRS) and the Uganda Tsetse Department鈥檚 settlement officer. The plan currently being put to the test began with driving a 20-kilometre road through the dense forests to encourage local people to cultivate plots alongside this road and, as they burned and cut down the jungle to create the plots, to force out the insect scourge.

A series of fly traps provide the records which will attest to the success or failure of this venture. The trap, invented by Dr K. Morris of EATRS, looks rather like a miniature vaulting horse from a gymnasium and the flies that enter from underneath its 鈥渂elly鈥� cannot get out until a researcher removes them and places them in a glass tube. Already the traps are yielding only one-third of the catches that were made before the road was built and the experiment begun, which suggests that the insect is being driven from the areas newly inhabited by people.

Information about the tsetse fly is also being gathered from traps that are placed in the areas not yet cleared, as well as others close to, but not inside, the newly cleared living and farming areas. In addition, cyclists are employed to ride up and down roads and paths every day with a trailer on which is a trap of grease-covered board covered in a substance designed to attract insects. This catches specimens as the cyclists travel around the different areas of forest and clearing, which are then taken to laboratories for study.

From The New 杏吧原创, 11 July 1957