In this northern Angolan town where Dr. Ribeiro runs a sleeping sickness center the deadly disease is spreading fast. Now it's 70 to 80 a month,'' Ribeiro said. The disease was close to being wiped out in Angola in the early 1960s but war and the influx of other diseases combined to increase poverty and reduce access to treatment. Sleeping sickness, a parasitic infection transmitted by the tsetse fly, begins with a fever and eventually affects the central nervous system, causing severe neurological disorders and, if untreated, death. The disease has two phases and there is little hope for patients when the parasite attacks the brain in the second phase.
Patients often slip into a coma and die.
Ribeiro said about 30 percent of all his patients died and only about 40 percent who arrived within the first 20 to 30 days of symptoms survived. Angola's 26-year civil war had seen the national caseload rocket from three in 1975 to as many as 120,000 last year, Dr. Ribeiro said. It will arrange for the production of pentamidine, melarsoprol and eflornithine, which are essential for its treatment. Bristol Myers Squibb of the United States is to fund the cost of supplying bulk material for production of one year's supply of eflornithine. Ribeiro said the funds would be a great relief.