[NAIROBI, SciDev.Net] Sleeping sickness has been killing people across Africa for generations. A disease with no vaccine, spread by the bite of a tsetse fly, it was once treated with injections of an arsenic derivative, a cure that could be as dangerous as the illness itself. By 1998, it was infecting 40,000 people a year.
Last month, the single oral-dose medicine Acoziborole Winthrop (acoziborole) became the newest and simplest weapon against the disease when it was given the nod for approval by European regulators.
The treatment was developed by French pharmaceutical company Sanofi in partnership with the Geneva-based Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), with human trials in West and Central Africa.
Now researchers are pushing further: a paediatric trial, ACOZI-KIDS, is now underway in Democratic…