The government has sent 8,000 tsetse fly traps to Kalangala District to help control the biting insects that have recently moved from the shores of Lake Victoria into people’s homes and farms.
Reports of increased tsetse fly bites were first recorded in September, mainly around Mweena Landing Site on Buggala Island.
Residents say the flies, which used to stay close to the lake, have now spread up to 500 metres inland, attacking people on verandahs, in gardens, and along footpaths.
Tsetse flies are vectors of sleeping sickness, a disease also known as Human African Trypanosomiasis. It is spread through bites from infected flies, and diagnosing or treating it is difficult and requires skilled health workers.
‘Tsetse flies have begun to cause mayhem. We used to see them at the lake shores, but now they reach our houses,’ Mr Ibrahim Muyingo, a resident of Mweena Landing Site, says.
He adds: ‘We are very worried about the diseases that could come from their bites. Even though we no longer see anyone with sleeping sickness, if these flies bite humans and animals, we are still at risk.’
Mr Julian Muwonge, a businessman at Mweena Landing Site, says the flies have increased.
‘Farmers and travellers have been at high risk of losing animals and even their lives. By the time we raised the alarm, many people on the shore were complaining of daily bites,’ he says.
The tsetse fly problem in Kalangala goes back to the 1920s, when outbreaks of sleeping sickness wiped out about 60 percent of the population and forced mass evacuations.
The colonial government moved residents to Masaka and Entebbe so that aerial spraying could be carried out. Today, the district still struggles with tsetse fly infestations, which continue to threaten both people and livestock with sleeping sickness and nagana respectively.
Mr Allan Mutagubya, the Kalangala District entomologist, says the current fly per trap per day (FTD) stands at seven.
FTD is a measurement used to determine the average number of flies caught by a single trap over three days.
He, however, says the traps are not enough to contain the flies, ‘We received 8,000 traps from the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, but that number is still far below what’s needed to cover all 64 inhabited islands,’ he says, adding, ‘Even Buggala Island alone cannot be sustainably covered with that number.’
He adds that the district has started deploying these traps in high-risk areas, beginning with Mweena, and is working with Village Health Teams (VHTs) and local leaders to identify more hotspots.
In 2010, the government, through the Creation of Sustainable Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Free Areas project, donated 20,840 traps to Kalangala. However, local leaders say all those traps have since stopped working.