Injecting child with sleeping sickness drug, DR Congo
Medics giving a young patient an injection of the sleeping sickness drug melarsoprol in a clinic in rural DR Congo. Sleeping sickness is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma brucei, which is spread by the bites of bloodsucking tsetse flies. The parasites infect the blood and cause fever, headache and joint pain, before moving to the nervous system causing personality changes, sleep problems and death. This boy has developed neurological sleeping sickness, which is harder to treat. Melarsoprol is highly toxic, but neurological sleeping sickness is almost invariably fatal so the drug is given. Filmed in a rural region of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018.