Information Related to "World News and Trends - Jan/Feb 1998"
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War allows deadly epidemic's return
Sleeping sickness, an ancient disease doctors once hoped to eradicate from Africa, is making a deadly return visit courtesy of the 15-year civil war in Sudan.
The disease is caused by a parasite spread through the bites of tsetse flies. The parasite multiplies in the blood and lymph nodes, bringing fever, pain and the debilitating weakness from which the disease gets its name. If untreated, the parasites can eventually infect the brain, leading to seizures, dementia and eventual death.
In the 1980s Belgian doctors in southwestern Sudan had managed to reduce the number of people infected with sleeping sickness to less than 1 percent of the populace. When civil war struck the country, the resulting breakdowns in civil order, transportation and communication forced Sudanese and international health workers out of more remote areas of the country. Fighting also forced refugees farther into the wilds and into neighboring countries.
When international-aid workers began returning to Sudan in recent years, they found the health-care system in complete collapse. With no medicines or medical personnel to keep it at bay, the deadly disease had regained lost ground to the point that workers estimate that from 20 to 40 percent of the population in some areas is infected.
Although the disease is curable, few people and governments can afford the cost for treatment-estimated at $300 to $600 per patient. Meanwhile, health officials worry that sleeping sickness is continuing its march into neighboring countries-specifically the Central African Republic and Congo (formerly Zaire)-which have suffered their own political upheavals and civil wars in recent years.
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