Unlock document.
This document is partially blurred.
Unlock all pages and 1 million more documents.
Get Access
AFRICAN TRYPANOSOMIASIS
By: Chelsea Blandford
[DATE]
[COMPANY NAME]
[Company address]
When asked about some deadly that affects the individuals in Africa, most think of
malaria, tuberculosis, or HIV/AIDS. What doesn’t come to mind is African Trypanosomiasis or
African sleeping sickness, which can kill a person in several months after being infected if left
untreated. African sleeping sickness is a parasitic disease that claims the lives of many African
people due to the living conditions of Sub-Saharan Africa and the large population, which leads
more people vulnerable. This neglected disease is transmitted to mammals through the bite of an
infected tsetse fly. More people should to be more aware and educated about this deadly disease.
This is why I am going to talk about the epidemiology and pathogenesis, the two variants of
African Trypanosomiasis, disease, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention/control.
To clarify how this disease proceeds, we need to start with the epidemiology and
pathogenesis of this disease. Human African Trypanosomiasis is a deadly disease caused by
infection with the extracellular parasite Trypanosoma brucei, for which today, 70 million people
are still living in high risk areas of contracting sleeping sickness (Maurice 2013). HAT (Human
African Trypanosomiasis) was first over looked in such a way that it took years of constant
unknown deaths to occur before being even being discovered or investigated although, sleeping
sickness has been known since the descriptions by Arab merchants and slave traders (Cattand
2001). However, in 1901 Fobes discovered the offending agent and then 2 years later in 1903,
Bruce determined that the tsetse fly had a role in transmitting the disease. As a result, less than
ten years later the basic epidemiological transmission cycle was described (Cattand 2001). Africa
has saw three severe epidemics of HAT. The first epidemic was in 1896 through 1906, which
took about 300,000 to 500,000 lives in Uganda and Congo (Cox 2004). This devastation sparked
the beginning of providing treatment and research to this deadly disease. The second epidemic
started in the 1920s to late 1940s however, the medications suramin and organo-arsenical
tryparsamide were invented and it helped fight the outbreak off. The third and most current
epidemic began in the 1970’s and was contained in Angola, Congo, Southern Sudan, and Uganda
(Cox 2004). Currently in recent years, the number of reported cases have been less than 10,000 a
year (Stich, Ponte-sucre, and Holzgrabe 2013). It is believed that many cases go undiagnosed
and/or unreported because someone usually does not seek medical treatment in time or did not
have the opportunity to since this disease is transmitted by the tsetse fly and they are only found
in rural environments. Lastly, African trypanosomiasis has two subspecies of Trypanosoma
brucei, T b gambiense and T b rhodesiense, (which I will further discuss in the following
paragraphs) and they both cause human disease.
As mentioned previously, the two variants of African Trypanosomiasis, are T b
gambiense, also known as West African trypanosomiasis or Gambian sleeping sickness, and T b
