African sleeping sickness shrouded in witchcraft

A frail 65-year-old woman sitting under the mango trees in a rural village in Chad suffers from a tropical disease that eats into the brain, and the locals blame on witchcraft.Ive been suffering for more than two months now. I have headaches, fever, and I just feel very tired, said Lea Sadene, who has just been tested and diagnosed.She has Human African trypanosomiasis, commonly known as sleeping sickness, which is transmitted by tsetse flies found in 36 sub-Saharan African countries.Sadene is in the first phase of the often fatal illness. Without treatment in four months to a year, the parasite penetrates into the brain, causing serious neurological symptoms, until death, said Doctor Benedict Blaynay, head of neglected tropical diseases at French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi.The symptoms can cause a change in personality, mental deterioration, leading to a long sleep or coma, which gives the illness its name, he said.Chadian health officials say around 3,300 people were infected between 2001 and 2011 in several areas of the landlocked central African nation, one of the poorest in the world.With more than 100 cases per year Chad is considered an endemic country, said Doctor Peka Mallaye, who is in charge of the national programme to fight against sleeping sickness.In Kobitoi in southern Chad recently, village women lined up with their children, many with swollen bellies, in the scorching sun as temperatures hit 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit) to undergo tests for the disease organised with Sanofi.The team found 14 cases of sleeping sickness out of 120 people examined, Mallaye said.This village is located next to a forest where the tsetse flies live. During the rainy season, people pass through the forest to go fishing or hunting, he said.