They start  like any ordinary fever accompanied by headache and joint pains. But this fever worsens with time, if there is no treatment. It makes you more and more drowsy and puts you to sleep, coma followed by death. That’s why it is commonly called sleeping sickness.

In reality it is African trypanosommiasis, which if left untreated, kills 100% of its victims in a very short time. Endemic in Southeast Uganda and Western Kenya, this disease kills more than 40,000 Africans each year and the animal form of the disease (nagana) kills two million cattle each year.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates the economic cost of both the animal and human diseases at $5m (sh8b) each year.

The disease comes in two forms - chronic (gambiense) in the northwest and acute (rhodesiense) in the southeast. The acute form of the disease is caused by parasites and transmitted to humans by tsetse flies.

The disease,  are in two forms:   chronic (gambiense) in the northwest and acute (rhodesiense) in the southeast. Cattle have been mostly affected by the chronic type for which no source has yet been found.

Scientists believe that it is not expensive to treat and prevent sleeping sickness,. The treatment cost of a single sleeping sickness patient is about $300 (sh500,000). But even such resources are not there in the affected regions.

World Health Organization definition of the disease African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs259/en/