Sleeping Sickness Breakthrough?

Scientists have lessened the number of sleeping sickness cases in Uganda by 90% after they injected cattle with a drug that kills the parasite.

22:26 10 November 2015

Scientists have discovered the fastest, cheapest way to address sleeping sickness that affect people in Uganda. The disease, which could be fatal when left untreated, is passed on to humans from cattle by the tsetse fly.

 

To address the problem, scientists have injected cattle with a drug that kills a parasite; a move that cut the number of acute cases in rural Uganda by 90per cent. 

 

Professor Sue Welburn, who led the research, said that sleeping sickness is a parasitic disease like malaria.

 

"It is transmitted by tsetse flies and they inoculate these parasites into your blood where they multiply and then these parasites move from your blood to your central nervous system where they cause profound problems and really quite extraordinary symptoms.

 

"It is absolutely fatal if it is not treated."

 

She added that domestic cattle, which do not get sick from the parasite, had become the main “reservoir of infection” in Uganda.

 

"It is just a matter of chance that animal gets bitten by a tsetse fly and that fly bites a human and infects them."

 

The researchers eliminated the trypanosome parasite that carries the disease by giving livestock a single injection of trypanocide. They also carried out regular insecticide spraying to prevent re-infection.