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Angola

Angola: Sleeping sickness threatens to spread

Luanda, 11/06 - The sleeping sickness may spread to the whole Angolan territory, unless measures like elimination of tsetse fly focus and precocious diagnose of infected persons are immediately taken.

The alert was released Monday in Luanda by the director general of the Institute of Combat and Control of Trypanossomiasis (ICCT), Josenando Teófilo.

The physician sounded the warning while opening the national seminar on combat of tsetse fly, transmitter of the disease to men and cattle, that will go until November 18. He said the sleeping sickness is a Government's current concerns as it is a public health problem, alike other endemics.

Currently, he stressed, the disease is confined to six provinces of the country. They are Uije, Malanje, Kwanza-Norte, Kwanza-Sul, Zaire and Bengo. But it can spread to the other provinces, unless appropriate measures are urgently taken.

He said that another seven provinces of the country are infested with tsetse flies, although not yet infected with the sleeping sickness parasite.

To Josenando Teófilo, the epidemiological coverage today is less by 10 percent as compared with the 40 percent of before independence of angola, which means a lot is to be done about it.

Meanwhile, in addition to disease combat campaigns carried out by moving and routine teams, the Health Ministry, through its ICCT and the French Institute of Research and Development (IPD), started a cycle of seminars to train tsetse fly hunters.

Attending the opening of the seminar, were the Health deputy minister, José Van-Duném, and the ambassador of France to Angola, Guy Azais.