Every one of us has had it at one time or another: leaden fatigue and an extreme need for sleep. Especially during the dreary winter months, the desire to simply pull the covers over our heads sometimes in the morning and allow our bodies and minds to rest is strong. “I’ve got the sleeping sickness” or “I’m dead tired” are phrases that are part of our everyday speech, and we usually don’t even give them a second thought. But it really does exist, the sleeping sickness. However, it has nothing to do with burn-out syndrome, i.e. complete mental and physical exhaustion.
The sting of the tsetse fly
The “real” sleeping sickness, if left untreated, can actually lead to death. Fortunately, it is not present in our latitudes. It occurs exclusively in tropical Africa – in extreme cases with epidemic-like proportions. This infectious disease is transmitted by the bloodsucking tsetse fly, which prefers to live in areas rich in rivers and water. Their bite is not only painful, but also opens the way for the so-called trypanosomes – these are single-celled parasites – to enter the human bloodstream. There are two forms of the pathogen: the East African “Trypanosoma brucei gambiense” and the West African “Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense”. They differ mainly in the duration of the disease course, and in that the West African form also affects animals (e.g. cattle and antelopes). Three stages are typical: first there is inflammation of the injection site (“trypanosome chancre”), followed by flu-like symptoms such as fever, headache, pain in the limbs, and swelling of the lymph nodes. Eventually, trypanosomes spread to the central nervous system, causing sleep disturbances, seizures and other neurological disorders. The World Health Organization (WHO) is sounding 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 good insect repellent and a mosquito net in their luggage. Helpful information on traveling to foreign countries is also provided by the health service of the German Foreign Office. The affected countries are planning to eradicate the tsetse fly with manipulated males, as cases of the disease have increased massively in recent years.
