African sleeping sickness is a disease that is spread from person to person by the bite of the tsetse fly. Some common symptoms of this infection are fever, chills, and rashes.This disease is known to destroy blood cells and infects other tissues in the body. African sleeping sickness can cause severe damage to the nervous system which leads to most individuals to lose consciousness, lapsing into a deep, fatal sleep. This disease is diagnosed by finding the parasite in body fluid, blood, or tissue by microscopy, and can be found in the lymph node fluid or in fluid or biopsy of a chancre (Miller 2006).
The African sleeping sickness can be found in thirty-six different sub-Saharan African countries where there are tsetse flies that transmit the disease. Most reported cases are from the Democratic Republic of Congo (WHO 2016). The disease was found to be in rural areas and depend on agriculture, fishing, animal husbandry or hunting. Back in the 1995, this disease was found to be very common with over 300,000 cases reported. In 2004, the cases reported had dropped to 17,616, and recently in 2010, there were around 7,139 cases reported. MSF admitted 330 patients for sleeping sickness treatment in 2014 (2015). Therefore, the case are dwindling as the disease is becoming less common. The biological factors that influence the chance of a person getting the African sleep sickness is common. This disease can affect any age, gender, and ethnic background. A few cases have been reported where a pregnant mother has passed the infection to her unborn baby. The infection can also be transmitted by blood transfusion or sexual contact (CDC 2015). This disease does not leave a genetic component because once you have this disease the person can get it again. There is an environmental factor that plays a role in someone getting African sleeping sickness. One factors is that the tsetse flies inhabit rural areas, living in the woodlands and thickets in ...