AFRICA/SUDAN - 60,000 victims every year and 60 million people in 36 Sub-Saharan countries risk infection by sleeping sickness

Rome (Fides Service) - Every year sleeping sickness caused by the tsetse fly, reaps thousands of victims and there is still no effective treatment to fight the disease. A sleeing sickeness alarm has been sounded in southern Sudan.
Almost two percent of people tested proved infected and concern is justified seeing that when the percentage of infection reaches 4% there is an epidemic. Tambura and the village of Ezo close by are in what is considered the epicentre of Africa’s sleeping sickness band which starts from Senegal and crosses the entire tropical zone as far as western Uganda.
Almost unknown in the rest of the world this disease, also called trypanosmiasis, strikes between 300,000 and 500,000 people in poor countries. It is contracted with a bite by the tsetse fly and although the symtoms may not appear immediately, unless treated it can be lethal.
Initially symptoms are headache, fever and fatigue. But in the second stage the parasite strikes the nervous system and can cause convulsions, insomnia at night, sleepiness during the day, and even provoke a state of coma and death.
According to the World Health Organisation every year African trypanosomiasis kills 60,000 and 60 million people in 36 Sub-Saharan countries are exposed to infection.
In Latin America, between 16 and 18 million people have been infected by the American version, American trypanosomiasi or Chagas sickness and about 100 million in 21 countries are exposed to infection. The tragedy is that in both cases research for the development of more effective drugs to treat the disease is almost non existent.
(AP) (7/9/2005 Agenzia Fides; Righe:28; Parole:307)