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How do I find out I have African Sleeping Sickness?
So I have this disease... now what?
How do people find out about this disease?
Where is all of our money going?
How has the number of infections changed over the past century?
This project is a hypothetical idea to help aid in diminishing the increased rates of individuals who contract and suffer from African sleeping sickness. We mainly focus on Uganda since this country contains half of the population at risk for contracting this debilitating disease.
African sleeping sickness (common name African Trypanosomiasis) is a debilitating and fatal neurological disease which is transmitted through the tsetse fly. It is widespread throughout sub Saharan Africa. In 1998 there were 40,000 reported cases which does not accurately reflect the unknown number of actual unreported cases. This is caused by the socioeconomic status and the political instabilities found in most endemic countries. Another huge problem would be the medical technology is not available throughout the country and what is available is out dated. It is estimated between 300,000-500,000 cases went undiagnosed and therefore untreated. It is believed that 60 million civilians in the endemic areas are at risk, a little over half of that figure live in Uganda. Our main focus is on a region in Uganda called Busoga which had two major epidemics in the years of 1900-1920 and 1980s.
There are two subtypes of African sleeping sickness. One subtype is Trypanosomosiasis brucei gambinese (Tbr) and Trypanosomosiasis brucei rhodesiense (Tbr). Tbg is most prevalent in Central and Western Africa where as Tbr is common in southern and East Africa. However in Uganda, both Tbr and Tbg are present and in the Busoga epidemics, Tbr was the main strain that was documented and killed 28,000 people within the Busoga region.
There are two stages of African Trypanosomiasis, an early and late stage. Early stage is often undetected due to flu-like symptoms including fever, headache and body aching. One symptom that is not classic flu and should be a distinct sign is a lesion or open sore where the tsetse fly bit the individual. The late stage is characterized by classic symptoms of African sleeping sickness which include disruptive sleep cycles, no sleep, or abnormal behavior.