This Man Went Abroad And Brought Back A Disease U.S. Doctors Had Never Seen

This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them. Lying in a hospital bed at the State Department medical unit in Washington, D.C., Claude Reece suspected he might have contracted malaria. It was 1995 and the American was sent back to the U.S. after coming down with a fever, sweats, pounding stomach aches and headaches, while on his first assignment working as a USAID country desk officer for Chad. “I felt that whatever ailment I contracted could be treated by the Medical Unit,” Reece told The Huffington Post ― that’s why he had been sent back to Washington. But the malaria test came back negative. Instead, the doctors told Reece a blood test revealed he had contracted Human African trypanosomiasis or “sleeping sickness.” The disease is caused by parasites transmitted by infected tsetse flies. And it’s 100 percent fatal if untreated. The doctors told Reece they had never come across anyone with the disease before. They told him they had no medications to give him. “I thought I was going to die,” Reece said. “I told my wife that. I told my children that. I told everybody that.” “We prayed,” he added. When the doctor tells you there is no drug for what you have Reece knew what sleeping sickness was. Prior to spending those four weeks in Chad, earlier assignments working for USAID had taken him on several trips ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news