Figures
Sleeping sickness patient rests in the ward, in Katanda HAT center (DR Congo).
A young man suffering from sleeping sickness rests on a bed at the Dipumba THA center in the province of Kasai, DRC, between two doses of intravenous treatment. He started NECT treatment (co-administration of intravenous eflornithine with oral nifurtimox) which was recently introduced for late-stage disease. Although NECT is a major improvement over the highly toxic melarsoprol, it still needs 2 daily intravenous infusions over 7 days. An oral treatment, as the one proposed with fexinidazole in this issue (see Torreele et al., 10.1371/journal.pntd.0000923), is urgently needed to support control programs and all efforts to eliminate sleeping sickness. DRC has the highest number of sleeping sickness cases in Africa.
Image Credit: Benoît Marquet
Citation: (2010) PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases Issue Image | Vol. 4(12) December 2010. PLoS Negl Trop Dis 4(12): ev04.i12. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pntd.v04.i12
Published: December 21, 2010
Copyright: © 2010 Torreele et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
A young man suffering from sleeping sickness rests on a bed at the Dipumba THA center in the province of Kasai, DRC, between two doses of intravenous treatment. He started NECT treatment (co-administration of intravenous eflornithine with oral nifurtimox) which was recently introduced for late-stage disease. Although NECT is a major improvement over the highly toxic melarsoprol, it still needs 2 daily intravenous infusions over 7 days. An oral treatment, as the one proposed with fexinidazole in this issue (see Torreele et al., 10.1371/journal.pntd.0000923), is urgently needed to support control programs and all efforts to eliminate sleeping sickness. DRC has the highest number of sleeping sickness cases in Africa.
Image Credit: Benoît Marquet