Health priority

Sleeping sickness, a neglected tropical disease

Inspection of a tsetse fly trap.

© RFI/Igor Strauss

By: Igor Strauss

1 min

Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT) is a neglected tropical disease, better known as sleeping sickness.

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Transmitted to humans by the tsetse fly, it causes, in addition to sleep disorders, crises of extreme violence and can lead to death.

It is therefore essential to be correctly diagnosed and to have access to treatment.

It occurs exclusively in 36 countries in sub-Saharan Africa where tsetse flies are found.

Today, there are only a few risk areas left in very remote places.

Between 2015 and 2019, only nine cases of trypanosomiasis were reported by Ivorian researchers.

But the fight is not completely over.

Where are the searches?

• Pr Arezki Izri

  , University Lecturer, Hospital Practitioner in Parasitology-Mycology in the Parasitology Department at the

  Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny

  in the Paris region

• Dr Dramane Kaba,

    medical researcher at the

  National Institute of Public Health of Côte d'Ivoire

  .

  Winner of

  the Mérieux Doctors Chair

  Prize 2015-2016

• Dr Mamadou Camara,

  Acting Coordinator of Neglected Tropical Diseases in Conakry, Guinea (PNLTHA Guinea) 

At the end of the program we take stock of the 11th edition of the

which has just taken place in Marseille from April 6th to 9th.

We talk about it with

Professor of infectious disease at

, and President of

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