It is essential that all the members of an expedition should be
re-vaccinated if they have not suffered from small-pox or been vaccinated
within two years. A proper supply of vaccine should be carried on the
journey. Heat and bright sunlight are very detrimental to vaccine lymph.
Hence the proper transport of such lymph in hot climates is a matter of
great importance and by no means always easy to arrange. Where a thermos
flask is available it may be used for storing and carrying the capillary
tubes, or they may be wrapped up in green leaves and inserted into a
hollow bamboo, the ends of which are closed with cotton wool.
_Inoculation._
Owing to the prevalence of typhoid and paratyphoid fevers in hot
countries it is essential that all persons, and more especially young
adults, proceeding to tropical countries should undergo preventive
inoculation. Two injections of the so-called triple vaccine, at ten days’
interval, are necessary, and both should be given shortly before leaving
or, if arrangements can be made, one or both may be given on ship-board.
_Isolation._
On the outbreak of an infectious complaint, such as small-pox (which is
very common amongst negro carriers), the sufferer should be promptly
isolated, and one or more attendants should take charge of the case and
not be allowed to come to camp. It is wise to select as attendants those
who have either had the disease, or who are protected (as by vaccination)
against it.
In Nigeria it was found most convenient to build grass huts, which were
burnt to the ground, together with the clothing and bedding of the
patient and attendants, on the termination of the outbreak.
All vessels which are not destroyed must be boiled thoroughly. The
motions, etc., of patients suffering from typhoid fever, cholera and
dysentery should be disinfected, preferably by boiling, or, better still,
destroyed by fire.
_Transmission of Infection._
The traveller should remember that of late years the rôle of the healthy
human “carrier” in the transmission of many communicable diseases has
been established. This is true of such diseases as enteric fever and
cholera, and when engaging servants, porters, and camp followers it is
important to inquire into their previous history and, if necessary, to
make certain that they do not harbour the specific organisms of such
diseases.
DISEASES AND THEIR PREVENTION AND TREATMENT.
In the tropics, as elsewhere, the diseases to which the traveller is
liable are due to widely differing causes, but in hot countries climatic
conditions and parasites play a predominant part. Insects are very
frequently to blame for the transference of the latter from the sick
to the sound, both insects which are not themselves parasitic on man,
_e.g._, the mosquito and the tsetse fly, and those which make man their
host, _e.g._, lice and fleas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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