They knew it was transmitted by tsetse flies in some areas they called them “canoe flies” because they were found near rivers or “elephant flies” because of their size. Īfricans were well aware that a closely related disease, animal trypanosomiasis, or nagana, caused fever and a progressive deterioration in the health of livestock, especially cattle. rhodesiense, is acute and can cause death within three to 12 months of infection –.
One, caused by the protozoan Trypanosoma brucei gambiense, is a chronic disease that can persist for months or even years with occasional mild symptoms before it enters the central nervous system. There are two varieties of sleeping sickness, and they affect their victims very differently. Once the pathogen crosses the blood-brain barrier and infects the central nervous system, the patient becomes lethargic or insane, then goes into a coma, and finally dies. The infection also causes a swelling of the lymph nodes at the back of the neck. An infected person has joint pain, headaches, and a fever, then becomes drowsy. Sleeping sickness is a parasitic disease transmitted by tsetse flies. The goal of this paper is to describe the nature of the sleeping sickness epidemics that afflicted East and Central Africa in the early 20th century, the efforts made by European scientists to understand the disease and find means of controlling it, and the differences between the methods used by the British, Belgian, French, German, and Portuguese colonial authorities to combat it. A hundred years ago, sleeping sickness attracted considerable scientific research and political attention because of its importance to the conquest of sub-Saharan Africa by the European colonial powers. Though it still kills many people every year, it cannot compete for celebrity with such major killers as malaria and AIDS. Human African trypanosomiasis, better known as sleeping sickness, nowadays ranks among the more neglected diseases in the countries of Africa where it is found.
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