By Amma Twum-Amoah, Commissioner for Health, Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development at the African Union & Samuel Kariuki, Continental Lead Africa and Eastern Africa Director, DNDi
Last month, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) registered a breakthrough new medicine for human African trypanosomiasis, known commonly as sleeping sickness and a devastating neglected parasitic disease that has claimed millions of lives across Africa over the past century.
Effective against both stages of the disease, acoziborole is a remarkable scientific achievement that has the potential to make sleeping sickness elimination an achievable goal within this decade. Administered as a single oral dose, it replaces treatments that were once difficult to deliver and, in some cases, dangerously toxic.
