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The relative efficacies of two educational methods of changing community attitudes to epilepsy were investigated in a Uganda community. It was shown from the results based on a pre-post-test questionnaire, that both methods, lecture-discussion and written materials, produced marked improvement in the people's ideas about epilepsy. The lecture-discussion method was only slightly more effective than written materials for both village and school groups. These findings show that, even in areas where literacy rates might be relatively low, written materials can still be used with some success. Although most attitude dimensions were influenced in the right direction by these efforts, some attitudes and beliefs remained essentially uninfluenced by either method.

A review of cerebrospinal meningitis in East Africa in the period 1911–1965 has been made and the following points became apparent. In East Africa it has been most prevalent in that region consisting of south-western Uganda, northern Tanganyika, western Kenya and northern Uganda. This is what may be termed the “meningitis curve” of East Africa. Major epidemic outbreaks affected Kenya in the latter 7 months of 1913 and Uganda in 1917. An epidemic wave swept through East African countries, starting in northern Tanganyika in 1939 passing through Kenya and arriving in Uganda in 1942, in general, following the direction of the “meningitis curve.” This wave, constituting a major epidemic in Tanganyika and in Uganda and only a minor one in Kenya, covered the entire period, 1939–1953. In East Africa, as in the “meningitis belt”, cerebrospinal meningitis has been predominantly a problem of rural areas.