Western Aic
(Continued from Preceding Prge)
cern should be an accelerated ef-
fort in the field of African educa-
tion-in our contributions to their
universities, in multiplying their
technical colleges, in adding train-
ed teachers to the African teaching'
force.
Such universities as that of
Ghana or Ibadan or Makerere
have their special relationships
with London University and they
receive intellectual and moral sup-
port from the mother institution,I
but I do not think there is any
doubt that, if we seriously looked
at this problem of African educa-
tional needs, we would do more
than we are doing now, and thati
we could do something much more1
systematic and thought-through,9
provided-and this is the point toI
which we come back again andI
again--provided our effort is not1
simply for one year's lease. Therei
is one thing you cannot do, and
that is educate a child in one year.4
THEN THERE IS the question of
educational exchanges and of
enabling Africans to go abroad to
train.,
The consensus of opinion amongi
educators in Africa appears to be1
that the results are better if theI
overseas study is undertaken at1
the graduate level. If the studentI
can be brought to university level
in his own country, he gets a sense
of his own society, of his own
status, of his own possibilities; hea
I Still Needed in Africa
will profit very much more by his' and of expanded UN Technical
later training if he has this solid Services. Might we not also look
period of education in his own at a possible coordination of the
country. efforts of Western nations to
I am sure that the field of edu- provide technicians on a systema-
cation is an area in which a more tic basis so that we do not cancel
decisive impact could be made each other out, or indulge in
than in any other and an impact avoidable overlapping?
which would have a speedier and We' might also ask ourselves
more direct effect upon the social whether our own foreign services
fabric of Africa than any other in the Western world are equipped
type of assistance. to fill in these gaps, always re-
New Public Hw-ealth Problem foi
Yet inevitably there will be a
gap before this new trained class
is ready to take over.
The Ghana government real-
istically recognizes this in its de-
sire to persuade ex-colonial Brit-
ish officials to remain. The same
process may soon be observable
in French West Africa, because I
have the impression that the
French African leaders today are
probably fully as alive as the gov-
ernment of Ghana to the benefit
of retaining French administrative
officials as servants of the new
governments.
HOWEVER, every if all the gov-
ernments concerned behave
with the utmost imagination and
generosity, I feel convinced that
there are still likely to be posts in
the administrative structure which
it will not be possible to fill from
local or ex-colonial resources.
I therefore wonder whether we
should not explore the possibilities
of, say, a United Nations Inter-
national Administrative Service,
membering that it is not simply a
question of moving a man onto
the job for two years and then
taking him away again, but of
putting in someone who is going
to do this longer-term job of help-
ing to maintain the framework of
social order over the years while
Africa, young Africa, grows.
It is a broad scale of variety
and choice in our Western eco-
nomic, industrial and agricultural
background that convinces me, if
we dedicated ourselves to this pur-
pose and saw it as a legitimate
concern of our foreign policy, that
we could call on infinitely greater
resources than the so-called Com-
munist world.
GIVEN SOME stability of ad-
ministration, we can look at
the prospects for further economic
growth. We come back to the four
prime movers of economic develop-
ment.
Let us take, first of all, export
incomes. I believe that the biggest
contribution that we can make to
UNTIL RECENT TIME malaria
was considered one of the
chief hindrances to progress in
many regions of the world. But
with a better knowledge of the
biology of the mosquito vectors
and the skillful use of insecticides,
it became possible to control ma-
laria.
The disease now considered by
many experts as most likely to'
retard development in Africa is
called human blood fluke, Bilhar-
ziasis-or -Schistosomiasis. As im-
plied in its common name, this
disease results from the presence
of trematode worms or "flukes"
living in the adult worm stage in
the rich venous blood vessels sur-
rounding the intestines or around
the.-urinary bladder.
The eggs produced by the adnt
warms escape from the human
Human Blood Fluke Has Replaced
Malaria cas Major Block to Progress
By HENRY VAN DER SCIlALIE
incidence is clearly evident; theI
Sudan is faced with the problem
of checking a situation in whichI
human blood fluke is just begin-
ning to increase at a steady rate.
In many ways both countries are
quite similar. For example, al-
though the people of- Egypt and
the Sudan are ethnically differ-
ent; they are for the most part
Islamic and ablutions are prac-
ticed in both regions. Both are
I
The African is being educated t
well as politically
Africa in this area is the biggest
contribution we can make to our-
selves-and that is not to afford
ourselves the luxury of a recession.
For the last twelve years during
which .the whole Western world
has boomed along, Africa has been
doing quite nicely. It has been do-
ing nicely because everybody else
has been doing nicely too. But if
the Western world reverts to pro-
longed recessions and avoidable
slumps it is the primary producers
who will take the knock first, be-
cause-they are the least protected
and it is there that pauses and
hesitations at the industrial cen-
ter have seismic effects on the out-
side world.
So I would say that what Africa
really needs of the Western world
in this matter of export incomes
is what in some measure the
Western world needs for itself-a
reasonably stable upward trend of
growth. If we grow, we help to
pull Africa up with us, and if we
do not grow, then Africa by virtue
of its vulnerability, its single-crop
economies and so forth, falls
quickest off the hook.
some are a -HfE N- WHEN WE turn to dynamic agri-
culture, I have yet to meet any
Ored; some economist interested in Africa who
does not believe that the most im-
have soft portant and the most useful field
for technical assistance and for
ouches o ithenvestment of some capital is
that of agricultural and extension
cke, work.
Increased productivity is the pre-
peatscondition of genuine agricultural
dynamism and without dynamic
trimagriculture general economic de-
~A 816.velopment is dubious indeed. But!
the truth is that we do not know
enough about the conditions of ad-
vance in African agriculture.,
In West Africa very little re-
search has been accomplished;
yet this is surely one of the areas
in which we probably could get
more results with perhaps less
capital than in any other field.
Now, passing on to infrastruc-
ture, this, I think, is one of the
great fields for future aid.
Here is a legitimate and effect-
ive sphere for intergovernmental
assistance and here, too, in Africa,
w _ the needs are vast. For instance,
Africa needs a transportation grid
and a power grid as a pre-condi-
tion of any further genuine eco-
nomic advance.
3I MYSELF FEEL that nothing
could do more to create a long-
term African sense of confidence
s in the support and interest of the
Western world than to make it
r eknown that we were prepared to
'consider a sustained, say a twenty-
five year, approach to plans for
providing Africa with a power and
transportation grid.
This is a shorthand way of de-
scribing it, but it would entail
taking those schemes which are
economically sound, which give
promise of growth, which open up
THE MI
o develop his land artistically as
and economically.
new areas of development and an-
nouncing that we are prepared to
consider and back them as a sym-
bol of our sense of responsibility
for the future growth of Africa.
Then lastly in the matter of in-
dustrialization, although African
governments will undoubted-
ly sponsor industrial schemes un-
der public management-as the
government of Uganda is doing
today-the area is likely to be one
predominantly of private enter-
prise. Certainly foreign enterprise
has a great part to play if the in-
coming companies underline at all
points their desire to build up Af-
rican entrepreneurial techniques,
African management, to go out for
African stockholders, to create lo-
cal companies and to give what
they alone can give-practical
training in entrepreneurial and
managerial techniques which are
not yet familiar or accustomed in
most of Africa, but which the Af-
ricans want to develop for them-
selves and for which they absolute-
ly need outside help.
AT THIS point, I should perhaps
try to widen the canvass a lit-
tle. I have talked at length of the
needs and possibilities of the Af-
rican communities where no spe-
cial racial, problems are at issue
and tried to suggest that political
advance there may outstrip de-
velopment resources in capital and
trained manpower. But in the
booming Southern communities of
Africa, where, in spite of the un-
certainties of our current reces-
sion, the prospects for the continu-
ance of rapid economic advance
are good, the political outlook is
'more uncertain.
I do not bring in South Africa
which has cut itself off from the
main current of African advance.
But the Rhodesias with their
'white settler communities are
committed to the idea of partner-
ship between white and black. A
multi-racial university has been
established as a symbol of that in-
tent.
And in the Congo, the raising of
the African to full membership in
a modern community is a goal
to which many present policies
-such as progressive urbanization,
expanding educational and indus-
trial opportunities without a color
bar-all contribute.
The question in these communi-
ties-and indeed, though it is de-
nied, in South Africa as well-is
whether- the wealth that is being
so rapidly increased can be shared
equitably and in time with the Af-
rican majority and an African
body of educated men and women.
created with whom partnership
becomes a genuine responsibility.
NOW ALTAOUGH the problems
in.these two large areas of Af-
rica-the black areas of moderate
growth and the booming south-=
(Concluded on Next Page)
FOUR programs were then under-
taken concurrently to test
whether it would be possible to
reduce the infection rate.
These four programs were nor-
mally carried by groups in differ-
ent parts of the country and at
different times. The teams organ-
ized for work in the Quliub proj-
ect engaged in: 1) medical work
involving measuring incidence and
treating with antimony drugs; 2)
sanitation involved providing wells
and latrines; 3) health education
was carried on to inform the peo-
ple of the villages about the dan-
gers of contaminating water and
being exposed to infection; and 4)
biology of the snails - a program
in which the distribution of in-
fected snails was determined and
the snails of the tract were then
eradicated with a molluscicide
(copper sulphate).
Incidentally, the first treatment
of this tract cost about thirteen
thousand dollars for the chemical
alone.
The next year there were half
as many snails but just as many
sites of snail infection; in the
third year conditions were back
to the state they were before any
treatment!
IT IS CLEAR that at present it
is not possible to control schis-
tosomiasis even when all known
measures are applied. The inci-
dence in the Nile Delta is known
to be at least 60 per cent with the
people suffering from both species
of human blood fluke.
On the other hand, the inci-
dence for about 500 miles along
the Nile from Cairo to the Aswan
Dam is now only about 6 per cent
and this region is infested only
with the vesicular type.
If Egypt succeeds in building
the new High Dam at Aswan the
upper Nile region will have per-
ennial irrigation and with that
system the area will become in-
fested as heavily as is the Delta.
The question might well be raised
whether ill health will not take
away most of the advantages
gained from a four crop system
possible with perennial irrigation.
the silk shir
a solid hit
on that share. But, both species
of blood fluke are now slowly
climbing in incidence even though
effort was made to keep the dis-
ease from getting established
there. It is now at 10 per cent
and is climbing at a steady rate.
Plans are under way to put an-
other million acres under culti-
vation.
T HE SUDANESE are very pro-
gressive and are making good
use of the funds they earn. Whole
villages are being reconstructed
with many improvements in such
problem areas as sanitation.
The Gezira scheme is typical
of many similar projects through-
out Africa. Most such programs
are doomed to failure unless means
for controlling human blood fluke
can be developed.
At present there is no drug
that is satisfactory as a cure for
human schistosomiasis. A num-
ber of well known laboratories
Women washing clothes in an African stream can easily be infected
by schistosomiasis. The disease is prevalent where water is found.
body with the feces or in the urine.
When the eggs reach water in
nature (canals, drains, ponds) a
smnall larva hatches and it pene-
trates certain species of snails.
AFTR ABOUT a month .of de-
velopment irf the snail, an-
other free swimming larva (a cer-
carium) is released. Humans in
contact with water containing cer-
carie are then liable to infection.
These minute larvae, which are
hardly visible to the naked eye,
bore into the body of people ex-
p~osed to infection by drinking,
swimming, irrigating fields, wash-
mg clothes, watering the gamoosa,
performing ablutions, and so on.
It is now known that this blood
fluke was widespread throughout
Africa for manycenturies. Eggs
of Bilharzia worms were found in
the intestines of mummies in
Egypt.
In many undeveloped regions
this disease is usually in a latent
form and the incidence is often
relatively low (about 5 per cent).
But when areas hitherto wild and
uncultivated become subject to
intensive cultivation and irriga-
tion schemes and when water pow-
er developments are initiated, the
incidence of this disease begins to
rise at an alarming rate. The in-
cidence can rise to a level at
which the ill health produced may
well cancel out the benefits pro-
duced by the agricultural develop-
ments.
AT PRESENT two countries .in
Africa serve very well to il-
lustrate these extremes in the
growth and development of Bil-
harziasis: Egypt and the Sudan.
In Egypt the harmful effects of
the disease with its unusually high
Henry van der Schalie hi
professor of zoology and Cur.
ator_ of Mollusks in the m'
seum of Zoology.,,
mainly agricultural with cotton
the main crop. Both are depend-
ent on the Nile for the water used
in their irrigation programs and
these waters harbor the same vec-
tor snails and the inhabitants are
subject to both species of Schis-
tosomiasis.
Y ET, THE STATUS of human
blood fluke in these regions is
strikingly different.
While Egypt clearly shows the
adverse conditions brought about
by Bilharziasis, the Sudan is faced
with the problem of having the
benefits of a wonderful irrigation
scheme cancelled out by the dis-
ease situation that can develop
there,
The struggle against Bilharzia-
sis inEgypt has been long and dif-
ficult. It is estimated that at least
half of the population is afflicted
with it.
A special project was under-
taken between 1951 and 1954 in a
5,000 acre tract on the Delta
about 12 kilometers north of Cairo.
Following a house to house survey
to register all the inhabitants of
the five main villages, it was de-
termined that more than half of
the 32,000 inhabitants were in-
fected.
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THE ENGLISH started a very
successful irrigation project
known as the Gezira Scheme.
A large canal which parallels
the Blue Nile was constructed
about 40 years ago; a million acresI
were planted to cotton and otherI
crops. This region with only 16
inches ofrrainfall has a climax
flora of scrub acacia and was in-
habited by only a few nomatic
bedouin people. It has now been
transformed into a remarkablyj
successful project with a popula-
tion of 300,000 and with an eco-
nomic development that is the
envy of many other African
countries.
The profits of the scheme are
shared so that 40 per cent stays
with the company, the sharecrop-
pers get another 40 per cent, and
the government receives 20 per
cent. Virtually all of the govern-
mental activities are supported
4
I edited
cilass ics
Sign fic
the soT
I
Co0/
state and
Nl
DAILY MAGAZINE
)AY,
Y22, 1