Sleeping Sickness Caseload Decreasing
Sleeping sickness continues to affect millions of people in 36 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Most live in remote, rural areas with limited access to health services. Many have been displaced from their homes by war and poverty. These factors all make it difficult to carry out surveillance, and to diagnose and treat cases.
However, in the past decade, the number of sleeping sickness cases around the world has dropped, and treatments have improved.
MSF has been actively engaged in treating sleeping sickness for 25 years in DRC, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, and South Sudan. MSF teams say they have noticed people in DRC becoming more aware of the dangers of the disease, while behavioral changes, linked to insecurity, are also contributing to the fall in cases.
“We believe the decrease in the number of cases we are seeing is linked to people beginning to change their lifestyles due to the insecurity in the area,” says MSF health advisor Dr. Turid Piening. “They are abandoning their traditions of hunting and fishing near rivers where tsetse flies gather, and are cultivating crops closer to home.”
But to eliminate the disease, much more remains to be done, including the development of an easy-to-use rapid test to replace complicated diagnostic procedures, coupled with oral drugs that can be taken at home. Until that happens, MSF is committed to finding, testing, and treating people suffering from this life-threatening disease, however remote the area in which they live.
Sleeping Sickness Caseload DecreasingSleeping sickness continues to affect millions of people in 36 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Most live in remote, rural areas with limited access to health services. Many have been displaced from their homes by war and poverty. These factors all make it difficult to carry out surveillance, and to diagnose and treat cases.However, in the past decade, the number of sleeping sickness cases around the world has dropped, and treatments have improved.MSF has been actively engaged in treating sleeping sickness for 25 years in DRC, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, and South Sudan. MSF teams say they have noticed people in DRC becoming more aware of the dangers of the disease, while behavioral changes, linked to insecurity, are also contributing to the fall in cases.“We believe the decrease in the number of cases we are seeing is linked to people beginning to change their lifestyles due to the insecurity in the area,” says MSF health advisor Dr. Turid Piening. “They are abandoning their traditions of hunting and fishing near rivers where tsetse flies gather, and are cultivating crops closer to home.”But to eliminate the disease, much more remains to be done, including the development of an easy-to-use rapid test to replace complicated diagnostic procedures, coupled with oral drugs that can be taken at home. Until that happens, MSF is committed to finding, testing, and treating people suffering from this life-threatening disease, however remote the area in which they live.
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