By Michael Makanga, Executive Director, Global Health EDCTP3 Joint Undertaking and Luis Pizarro, Executive Director, DNDi
We received our medical training on opposite sides of the world, but were both horrified to learn about the nightmare illness human African trypanosomiasis, also known as sleeping sickness.
For one of us, studying to be a doctor in Chile and then in France, the disease was distant, but unique, for its terrifying symptoms. Sleeping sickness starts with aches and fever but then leads to severe neurological symptoms such as psychosis, aggressive behaviour – and the sleep disruptions that give the disease its name. Without treatment, almost all affected people die.
