What Is African Sleeping Sickness?
3. Transmission
One thing that determines how dangerous a particular pathogen is, is how it can be transmitted, and how easily. Some pathogens can be very dangerous to us indeed if they were to infect us but, thankfully, these are often not prevalent because they don’t spread easily.
As mentioned, African sleeping sickness is spread mostly through bites from the tsetse fly. This is a problem because it makes it very difficult to contain the disease. It is a particular problem for those living in rural areas in Africa where the fly is common. In addition to fly bites, it can also be given to unborn children from their mother. It is also spread by contaminated needles in a small number of cases.
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