Big push against sleeping sickness

Sleeping sickness is a big killer in rural Africa

By West Africa correspondent Mark Doyle

Scientists from around the world have begun a five-day meeting in the West African state of Burkina Faso seeking to tackle a disease believed to claim 100,000 African lives every year.

We need over $30m every year for the next five to 10 years to eliminate the disease in Africa

WHO's Dr Jean Jannin

Popularly known as sleeping sickness, and officially as African Trypanosomiasis, the disease is carried by the tsetse fly.

About 60 million people living in tsetse-fly endemic areas of west and central Africa are at risk, as are cattle and horses.

The meeting will launch an Africa-wide campaign to eliminate sleeping sickness, aided by donations from international drug companies.

Silent killer

Sleeping sickness first came to international attention when colonial explorers like Livingstone and Stanley noticed that their horses could not survive in parts of Africa.

The disease is spread by the tsetse fly

But people had been dying from the bite of the tsetse fly for a long time before that, and are still dying today.

Sleeping sickness has been dubbed The Silent Killer because its victims are mostly from rural populations where medical screening is rare and cause of death often goes unrecorded.

The meeting in Burkina Faso, which over 300 scientists and other delegates are expected to attend, will launch an Africa-wide campaign to eradicate the tsetse fly under the political umbrella of the African Union, previously known as the Organisation of African Unity.

The campaign has received a boost, in the form of free drugs donated by the pharmaceutical giant Aventis. But scientists say free drugs are not enough.

They want a mass medical screening to wipe out the tsetse fly once and for all, and they hope that this week's meeting will boost financial commitments to such an operation.

Dr Jean Jannin, head of the Sleeping Sickness department at the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO) told the BBC: "At a rough estimate I'd say we need over $30m every year for the next five to 10 years to eliminate the disease in Africa".

Rural screening

But its not just a question of money, Dr Jannin stressed: "We need the political will to organise a massive programme of screening in the field, so we're very pleased the African Union is on board".

According to WHO estimates, about half a million people in sub-Saharan Africa are currently infected by African Trypanosomiasis - but because of a lack of medical screening in rural areas, many do not even know they have the disease until it is too late.

If left untreated, the disease, which causes severe drowsiness, cripples the central nervous system - by which point it is almost always fatal.

The tsetse fly that kills people in west and central Africa has also made cattle or horse rearing impossible on some parts of the continent. The fly is endemic in 36 countries.

In many of these countries - such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea Conakry and Liberia - armed conflict has exacerbated the spread of the disease and made effective medical screening impossible.