Almost, he confused it with the tsetse fly, spoken cici but this fly causes sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis)
Here is some .hmm "medical" insight.
btw. I´m hesale from RB, but please don´t call me a basher, lol
The biggest biological killer of mankind in Africa was, and continues to this day to be, the genus Anopheles, the mosquito. The females of certain mosquito species carry the parasites causing malaria. This disease still accounts for three million deaths across the continent each year.
The indigenous African populations had evolved some immunity to malaria through a modification in the structure of their blood cell structure deforming it from plate-like in shape to something resembling a sickle.
Tragically this resistance was a double-edged sword as the children of two adults carrying the recessive gene for this modification also inherit the fatal condition sickle cell anaemia.