SLEEPING SICKNESS IN DR CONGO

SOME 175 new cases of Trypanosomiasis – commonly known as sleeping sickness – were diagnosed in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s western Bas-Congo province last year. According to the chief medical officer at the disease’s control office in Kinshasa, 152050 people had been checked for the disease which is spread by the tsetse fly. The office attributed the persistence of sleeping sickness to high concentrations of tsetse flies and the absence of traps to catch the vector. It also blamed certain patients who resorted to traditional healers instead of completing doses prescribed to them at health centres.