What does sleeping sickness mean?
Every one of us has experienced it at some point: leaden tiredness and an extreme need for sleep. Especially in the dreary winter months, the desire to simply pull the covers over your head in the morning and give your body and mind a rest is great. “I have sleeping sickness” or “I’m dead tired” are sentences that are part of our everyday language use and which we usually don’t think about at all. It really does exist, sleeping sickness. However, it has nothing to do with a burn-out syndrome, i.e. complete mental and physical exhaustion.
The sting of the tsetse fly
“Real” sleeping sickness can actually be fatal if left untreated. Fortunately, it is not represented in our latitudes. It occurs exclusively in tropical Africa – in extreme cases with epidemic proportions. This infectious disease is transmitted by the blood-sucking tsetse fly, which prefers to stay in areas rich in rivers and water. Their sting is not only painful, but also opens the way for the so-called trypanosomes – these are single-celled parasites – into the human bloodstream. There are two types of pathogens: the East African “Trypanosoma brucei gambiense” and the West African “Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense”. They differ mainly in the duration of the course of the disease and in the fact that the West African form also affects animals (e.g cattle and antelopes). Three stages are typical: first there is an inflammation of the puncture site (“trypanosome chancre”), then flu-like symptoms such as Fever , headache, body aches and swelling of the lymph nodes. Eventually, the trypanosomes spread throughout the central nervous system, causing sleep disturbances , seizures, and other neurological disorders. The World Health Organization WHO sounds the alarm: It estimates the number of people infected with the pathogen in Central Africa at 300,000 to 500,000. Anyone traveling to these areas should definitely have a good insect repellent and bring a mosquito net with you. The Health Service of the Federal Foreign Office also provides helpful information on traveling to foreign countries. The affected countries plan to eradicate the tsetse fly with manipulated males, since the cases of the disease have increased massively in recent years.