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