Control and Prevention of African Trypanosomiasis: Strategies Designed to Overcome Antigenic Variation

African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) killed several million people during the first half of the twentieth century. The most recent epidemic in Uganda from 1976–1982 [1] dramatically illustrated the potential for new outbreaks whenever war, famine, or economic collapse interfere with tsetse control. Although accurate records are unavailable, it is likely that as many as 10,000 infections occurred in the Ugandan outbreak. This epidemic began near Lake Victoria in an old endemic area and spread northward into new foci that covered about half of the Busoga area of Uganda [1]. In 1980–1981 a small outbreak occurred in west central Kenya in another endemic focus on the other side of Lake Victoria.