This Doctor Gave Up His Shot At A Cushy Career To Cure A Little Known-Disease

This article is part HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to eliminate them. His name was Tendayi. He had watched five of his nine children die. Yet when he was diagnosed with a serious disease, he steadfastly held onto his will to live ― until he just couldn’t anymore.   Tendayi died about a decade ago, but his picture still sits on Dr. Wilfried Mutombo’s desk in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It reminds him daily that a terrifying ― yet treatable ― disease is still killing far too many people. Mutombo, 45, could have chosen a path that promised competitive compensation and days full of seeing patients with common ailments. Instead, he decided to focus on finding a cure for the mystifying illness that killed Tendayi and thousands of other people living in rural areas.  Tendayi succumbed to African trypanosomiasis, known as African sleeping sickness. It occurs primarily in the DRC, and is far more alarming than its name would suggest The parasitic disease is transmitted by the tsetse fly and attacks the central nervous system. It can cause people to sleep all day and stay up through the night. The illness can also lead to severe hallucinations ― some patients have been known to chase neighbors with machetes and scream in response to the slightest touch. And it can be deadly when not treated properly.  The disease mostly affects pe...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news