As we grapple with the ongoing threat of Mpox and the scars of Covid remain raw, there is reason for cautious celebration: we are on the brink of eradicating a brutal disease that has tormented Africa for generations. The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) technical advisory group on human African trypanosomiasis – commonly known as sleeping sickness – has confirmed that elimination by 2030 is within sight.
Sleeping sickness has been termed “the colonial disease” because of its inextricable links with the European scramble for Africa. When the British established Uganda as a protectorate, they displaced local communities to cultivate seemingly fertile land. The disaster that followed made clear why locals had avoided the tsetse-fly-infested regions for centuries. Between 1901 and 1906, more than 250,000 Ugandans died from this parasite-driven illness, which attacks the bloodstream in its first stage and later wreaks havoc on the central nervous system, disrupting the sleep cycle (hence its colloquial name) and causing profound neurological deterioration. During a 1907 visit, Winston Churchill was appalled by this “scourge”, and called for urgent action in his book My African Journey.
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