Africa: Tsetse fly costs agriculture billions every year
DAKAR: Each year in Africa the tsetse fly causes more than US$4 billion in agriculture income losses, kills three million livestock and infects up to 75,000 people with trypanosomiasis, according to the UN.
Though sterilising the flies may help wipe out the offending parasite, it is a long, expensive process that is losing experts to other more well-funded health research, according to scientists.
The head of the human African trypanosomiasis (“sleeping sickness”) programme at the Geneva-based Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), Joseph Ndung'u, told IRIN he left his position as director of the Kenyan Trypanosomiasis Research Institute in order to expand his work beyond Kenya.
“But it is true that many scientists [in Africa] are moving away from tsetse flies to other diseases that are seen as more sexy,” he said.
