African Sleeping Sickness

Sleeping sickness occurs only in sub-Saharan Africa, in regions where tsetse flies are endemic. There are many regions where tsetse flies are found, but sleeping sickness is not. The rural populations that live in such environments and depend on the flies for agriculture, fishing, animal husbandry or hunting are the most exposed - along with their livestock - to the bite of the tsetse fly. Sleeping sickness affects remote and rural areas where health systems are least effective, or non-existent. It spreads with socio-economic problems such as political instability, displacement of populations, war and poverty.

Human African trypanosomiasis takes two forms, depending on the parasite involved: Trypanosoma brucei gambiense (T.b. gambiense) is found in central and West Africa. A person can be infected for months or even years without obvious symptoms of the disease emerging. When symptoms do emerge, the disease is a

Unless treated, African trypanosomiasis is a fatal illness, and the treatment is costly. The drug used to treat the early signs of the disease is also used to kill a parasite that affects some people with the disease AIDS. This has increased its price. The drug used in more severe Sleeping Sickness infections is a poison that can kill up to ten percent of the patients who use it (Anonymous, 2001). A safer medicine had stopped being produced recently. However, the W.H.O. negotiated an agreement with a drug company to provide all the medicines to treat sleeping sickness free of charge.

Sleeping sickness also has major impacts on economic and social roles in Africa. Sleeping sickness has a major impact on the development of rural areas by decreasing the labor force and hampering production and work capacity. It remains a major obstacle to the development of entire regions. In countries such as Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo or Sudan, the operational capacity to respond to the epidemic situation is largely surpassed and in certain endemic areas the observed prevalence is huge. In numerous provinces in these countries, prevalence greater than 20% has been reported. Other sub-species of the parasite cause animal trypanosomiasis. The two human and animal forms of the disease remain a major obstacle to the development of rural regions of sub-Saharan Africa: human loss, decimation of cattle and abandonment of fertile land where the disease is rife.

After a person is bitten by an infected fly, symptoms such as a red painful swelling develops at the site of the fly bite. From this site of injection, the parasite invades the blood stream causing episodes of fever, headache, sweating, and enlargement of the lymph nodes. Parasites then invade the central nervous system where they produce the symptoms typical of sleeping sickness. Then the parasites invade the brain, ca

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