More significant than the leprosy home near Yaounde – later abandoned - was the Leproserie Ossidinge... The colonial government’s intention to establish an exemplary facility, where conditions would be provided for patients to support themselves through cultivation, would have seemed a pleasant duty to the doctor and station administrator, Dr. Alfred Mansfeld, prominent as head of the Government Station from 1905 to 1909, and the Ossidinge District from 1910 to 1914. He had noted on his travels the high number of cases in the area - 600 cases, 1.2 % in a population of 50 000. By the end of 1909 the building project for the leprosarium at Ossidinge had begun, with kasava, vegetables and later palm oil trees planted on 150 hectares for the patients, who then had only to maintain them. A further 100 hectares of open land and 250 hectares of primaeval forest provided any building materials needed. A two metre fence spanned a 12 km-long circumference. The porter living in the guard house at the entrance was to supervise the visits of relatives. Mansfeld had learned from the latest International Leprosy conference “that leprosy was less infectious than syphilis or tuberculosis”, so he permitted the unusually frequent visits of relatives, two or three times a week.

To Mansfeld, who had read the proceedings of the Second Leprosy Congress of 1909 in Norway, the French colony of Madagascar was a model in its self-sufficiency, isolating the patients not in “locked-up” hospitals but in “Leprosy-Farming-Colonies”. Mansfeld was also a creative financier, overcoming funding shortfalls by imposing a leprosy tax. He was well informed too on developments in treatment, and planned Nastin injections. Therapeutic efforts were made with Jodoform, Karbol, Salvarsan and Antileprol. However his responsibilities as adminstrator prevented his exceeding his budget, and did not allow him to administer Bayer’s new Antileprol therapy - he chose instead to use the combined therapy which he had learned from Professor Erwin Bälz, working in Japan (Oleum Gynocardiae, dressings of salicylic acid and bath cures of 40° to 60°). (Translated and summarised from Wolfgang U Eckart, Medizin and Kolonialimperialismus: Deutschland 1884-1945)