Several years ago the medical school I worked for in western Kenya began a massive door to door Home Counseling and Testing program for HIV. It seemed unique: we hadn’t done this extensive screening for any other major chronic disease. It was part of a “population health” approach that was new, perhaps even cutting edge in public health.

Except that it wasn’t new. In the 1920s a French doctor, Eugene Jamot, pioneered this approach to detect sleeping sickness in what was then French Equatorial Africa. The French were very proud of him for this, and called this technique “Jamotique”. But his program backfired, as we will see.

At our medical school in Kenya they didn’t call the program “Jamotique”, they called it HCT - home counseling and testing. They had likely never heard of Jamotique. Was it that they didn’t know history? Or that they didn’t know French? Or perhaps both?

And will they, some years from now, find their program backfiring?

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