Sleeping sickness facts for kids
- "Sleeping sickness" is also another name for Narcolepsy.
Sleeping sickness, or African trypanosomiasis, is an infectious disease. It is caused by parasites from the species Trypanosoma brucei.
People get African trypanosomiasis from the tsetse fly. Because of this, it is most common in certain areas of Africa, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, where the tsetse fly lives. Researchers say that about 70 million people, in 36 countries, are at a high risk for getting sleeping sickness. As of 2010, sleeping sickness had caused around 9,000 deaths per year (compared to 34,000 in 1990).
In 2013, about 30,000 people had African trypanosomiasis. Also, about 7,000 more people were getting the disease every year. More than 80% of these people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Medications can treat African trypanosomiasis.
Images for kids
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Drawing of a tsetse fly from 1880
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Two areas from a blood smear from a person with African trypanosomiasis, thin blood smear stained with Giemsa: Typical trypomastigote stages (the only stages found in people), with a posterior kinetoplast, a centrally located nucleus, an undulating membrane, and an anterior flagellum. The two Trypanosoma brucei subspecies that cause human trypanosomiasis, T. b. gambiense and T. b. rhodesiense, are indistinguishable morphologically. The trypanosomes' length range is 14 to 33 µm, Source: CDC
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Capture devices for tsetse flies, on shore and on a boat in Africa. Efforts to prevent sleeping sickness.
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In 1903, David Bruce recognized the tsetse fly as the arthropod vector.
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Numerous spots of bleeding into the skin of the leg in a person infected with T. b. rhodesiense
See also
In Spanish: Tripanosomiasis africana para niños
