Human African Trypanosomiasis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Global Health Project
Student’s Name
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Table of Content
TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Overview PAGEREF _Toc472419990 \h 3
Rational of the Topic PAGEREF _Toc472419991 \h 3
Target Area PAGEREF _Toc472419992 \h 5
Summary PAGEREF _Toc472419993 \h 5
References PAGEREF _Toc472419994 \h 7
Human African Trypanosomiasis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Overview
I chose to investigate Human African trypanosomiasis on all residents who reside in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Human African trypanosomiasis (Sleeping Sickness) is a parasitic infection spread by the bites of tsetse flies that is almost 100% fatal without prompt diagnosis and treatment to prevent the parasites invading the central nervous system (Berger, 2016). Over the past three decades, DRC ranks as the leading African country that has reported high incidence of human African trypanosomiasis. According to a report by World Health Organization in 2012, DRC continued to record numerous cases of gambiense HAT and this accounted for 84% of the total continental cases (Hasker & Lutumba, 2012). The paper seeks to review the status of sleeping sickness in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the recent years, in particular addressing the spatio-temporal patterns and the epidemiological tendencies at the provincial and national level of the DRC.
Over the years, DRC implemented efforts to fight the illness have been partially successful especially in the sixties. The cases have been increasing especially in the 1990s after the termination of the Belgian bilateral aid, which prompted instances of insecurity that led to the collapse of the Congolese health care system. For this reason, the diseases escalated to an alarming level in the mid of the 1990s (Mumba & Bohorquez, 2011). At this period, DRC started recording over 25, 000 cases of HAT every year. The pandemic began to reduce only after the Belgian bilateral aid was restored in 1998 (Hasker & Lutumba, 2012). This year marked serious launching treating and screening program towards the diseases.
Rational of the Topic
The decision to study the Human African trypanosomiasis is triggered by the observation of the recent resurgence of the deceases in the central African country as well as the constant urge to understand the epidemiological concept and history of the illness (Mumba & Bohorquez, 2011). In the Democratic Republic of Congo. There has been an alarming epidemic of HAT, which have also been linked to a history of devastating epidemics that are reported annually since the year 2000 (Media centre , 2017). As much as there have been measures and control efforts to curb the disease, still there have been signs of re-emergence once this measures are unrestrained (Media centre , 2017). The reason for choosing DRC country as the target population is due to the fact that DRC has proven to be be the worst affected country. For instance in the 20th centrury a population of between 300 000 and 500 000 people succumb to death from the illness (Mumba & Bohorquez, 2011). From this statistics, the topic becomes a debatable and researchable medical study that has been investigated in a bid to come with more reliable control measures and permanent so...