New Pill Has Potential to Eliminate Deadly Sleeping Sickness.

The article focuses on the potential elimination of human African trypanosomiasis, also known as sleeping sickness, through a new single-dose treatment called acoziborole. Developed by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) and Sanofi, acoziborole has received a positive opinion from the European Medicines Agency and offers a simpler, one-day therapy with a 96% success rate, compared to the longer and more invasive current treatments. Sleeping sickness, transmitted by the tsetse fly, remains endemic in remote parts of sub-Saharan Africa despite a 97% decline in cases since 1998. The new drug, to be donated by Sanofi to the World Health Organization, aims to improve patient access and reduce transmission, potentially enabling elimination of the disease as a public health threat by the end of the decade. [Extracted from the article]