Scientists have called for the international community take more interest in sleeping sickness, according to a report on the Science and Development Network website.
They warn that drugs currently used to treat the disease are old and toxic, adding that sleeping sickness warrants a higher research priority because of its threat to health.
The comments were made at a meeting in Kampala organised by the Ugandan ministries of health and agriculture, together with British communication company WRENmedia. Participants discussed the human cost of sleeping sickness and the results of recent studies conducted in northern Uganda.
In Uganda alone, more than nine million people are at risk of infection from the parasite-borne disease, yet only 20% of these people can access diagnosis, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
“Long-term failure by the West to help Africa control the spread of tsetse flies — which spread the disease — has resulted in [the flies] multiplying, attacking larger areas and infecting hundreds of thousands of Africans,” said Dawson Mbulamberi, of the Ugandan Health Ministry.
Mbulamberi and Fred Kansiime, from the Ministry of Agriculture’s coordinating office for control of trypanosomiasis, said that once someone contracts sleeping sickness, death is certain without fast diagnosis and treatment.
Abbas Kakembo, a senior field officer in the Ministry of Health, revealed that more than 500 000 people are infected with the disease in Uganda.
“One of the serious constraints is that drugs [available for treating sleeping sickness] are old and toxic, particularly melarsoprol and eflornithine. And in one of the worst-hit areas — Arua district close to DRC [the Democratic Republic of Congo] and south Sudan — 30% of those treated had resistance to drugs,” he said.
Kakembo added that only 5% of those infected are under surveillance or have access to medical care.
Miriam Nanyunja, disease prevention and control officer at the WHO, agreed that more should be done to tackle the disease. However, she said the Ugandan Ministry of Agriculture should more strongly support health experts in efforts to trap tsetse flies and train farmers to cut down bushes where the flies live.
The WHO has indicated that the two types of the sleeping-sickness parasite — gambiese from West Africa and rhodesiense from Zimbabwe — are likely to overlap in Uganda, making it difficult to diagnose and treat the disease correctly. — SciDev.Net