Significant progress has been made in the treatment of human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) – better know as sleeping sickness.
The WHO has recently accepted nifurtimox-eflornithine combination therapy (or NECT) as a treatment for people suffering from the advanced stage of the disease. The effectiveness of this combination therapy has now been proven, as has the fact that it does not have the terrible side-effects of previous treatments.
An MSF doctor in Banda, Haut-Uélé, checks on a patient receiving treatment for stage 2 HAT. New treatments should mean shorter hospital stays and fewer side-effects
Photo by Claude Mahoudeau/MSF
NECT is more effective than previous medicines. The patient receives fewer injections and spends less time in the hospital, making it possible to reduce costs. The kit containing the drug and the necessary supplies is smaller, lighter, and therefore, less expensive and easier to transport. Treating one patient costs just half the price of eflornithine monotherapy (€223 versus €447).
Without treatment, people infected with sleeping sickness will die: it is 100 per cent fatal. Unfortunately in many contexts, because of poor healthcare systems, treatment is not available. Province Orientale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where MSF had been working since 2007, is one such example.
Earlier this year the medical aid organisation’s sleeping sickness project had to be closed due to high levels of insecurity across the entire region, leaving several thousand people without access to vital medical care. An additional concern is that the project also discovered that the disease is spreading to areas that have not been contaminated for a long time.
Public health services in the region have not been able to take over MSF’s work, given their limited resources and the complexity of the treatment.
So although the arrival of NECT is a positive for people who suffer from this deadly disease, many challenges still remain.
In highly volatile parts of a country in crisis, such as the DRC, treatment will not be possible unless security improves. It will also require the mobilisation of the necessary resources and significant improvements in the healthcare system. Then we hope treatment can become accessible to the thousands of people who have received a ‘double sentence’: to be victims of a deadly disease and to live with the threat of pervasive violence.