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Belgium gives €12.5 million to fight sleeping sickness

    NAIROBI

    Belgium has given €12.5 million (US $14.2 million) to fight African trypanosomiasis, commonly known as sleeping sickness, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), its embassy in the capital, Kinshasa, announced on Tuesday.

    It said that efforts would be focused on provinces in which it was particularly endemic, namely Kinshasa, Bandundu, Bas-Congo, Equateur, Katanga, Kasai Occidental, Kasai Oriental and Maniema.

    It added that it hoped to achieve a rate of infection less than 0.1 percent by 2007 - the level at independence - and that this would be achieved primarily through epidemiological surveillance and training of local medical staff.

    Belgium said that it would also provide two experts to the Direction nationale du Programme National de lutte contre la Trypanosomiase Humaine Africaine.

    The Belgian embassy said that this would be the third phase in its most recent efforts to fight sleeping sickness in the Congo, following a first phase from 1997 to 1999, and a second phase that began in 1999 and due to conclude in September 2003.

    Along with Angola and Sudan, the DRC is one of three countries in the world where there is an epidemic of the disease, in terms of very high cumulated prevalence and high transmission, according to the World Health Organisation. Other affected countries include the Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Tanzania and Uganda.

    African sleeping sickness is caused by trypanosomes, or protozoan parasites. It is transmitted to humans through the bite of the tsetse fly (genus Glossina).

    When a person becomes infected, the trypanosome multiples in the blood and lymph glands, crossing the blood-brain barrier to invade the central nervous system where it provokes major neurological disorders. Infection by trypanosomes causes neurological alterations that are often irreversible even after successful treatment. Psychomotor and neurological retardation even among cured children is frequent. Without treatment, the disease is invariably fatal.

    [For more on African sleeping sickness, go to www.who.int]

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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