I missed this when it appeared in New Vision on October 31: Worrying sleeping sickness merger. Excerpt:
Health experts are worried about the narrowing gap between two types of sleeping sickness from the eastern region of the country to the northern.
It is understood that the gap has narrowed to within 100 kilometres.
Uganda is apparently the only country with the two forms of sleeping sickness. T.b. Gambiense, also known as the chronic form is found in the West Nile region while T.b. Rhodesiense, also known as the acute form is based in the south eastern region.
While the chronic form is found in seven districts, the other form, Rhodesiense, is more spread out, present in 33 districts.
The fear now is that the merger of the two is likely to cause a state of drug resistance to the available drugs on the market.
“Each form is treated with a different drug so disaster may occur when the two forms meet,” explains Dr. Charles Wamboga, coordinator for National Sleeping Sickness Control Programme at the ministry of health.
Sleeping sickness, also known as Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT) is an infectious disease caused by a parasite known as Trypanosome which is transmitted by infected tsetse flies. The infected flies cause Nagana disease in both livestock and wildlife.
At a conference recently at Paradise Hotel, Jinja where experts met to discuss strategies for the elimination of tsetse flies, Dr. Wamboga explained that sleeping sickness is among the neglected tropical diseases (NTD).
The disease, which mainly affects remote rural areas, contributes a lot to the entrenched cycle of poverty, ill health and stigma, he pointed out.
During the discussion, another participant, Dr. Abbas Kakembo revealed that the two unique forms of sleeping sickness were 150km apart eight (8) years ago.
“Increased movement of livestock trade in regions where restocking occurred has fuelled the expansion of the disease,” Kakembo explained, saying that it is the acute form invading upwards in areas like Teso and Lango where it never used to exist.
Burden of disease
All unreported cases die. “There is a big challenge of under-reporting where three cases are not reported for every one reported case,” said Dr. Wamboga.
Treating the disease comes at a cost ($300; sh750,000 per patient). Fortunately, it’s done for free in the affected areas.
Approximately 10 million people are at a risk of getting the disease, with 2,124,000 for Gambiense while 7,877,000 for Rhodesiense.
“In 2012, we diagnosed 99 cases which were treated while in the last 13 years, 7,562 have been treated,” revealed Dr. Wamboga.
