Tsetse fly researchers have made a major breakthrough that could see sleeping sickness and nagana, which are major threats to 11 million Kenyans and their livestock in 38 counties, eliminated.
These diseases may become history after Kenya’s International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) and an international team of scientists completely mapped the genome of the tsetse fly.
In a study published in the journal Science on Thursday last week, ICIPE and the international team of researchers announced they had the precise knowledge of the insect that transmits African sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in animals.
“This is a major milestone for the tsetse research community. Our hope is that this resource will facilitate functional research and be an ongoing contribution to the vector biology community,” said Geoffrey Attardo, a research scientist at the Yale School of Public Health in the United States and the lead author of the paper.
The team is optimistic that the knowledge of the insect’s biology and physiology promises to yield powerful genetic tools that could one day help eliminate the disease from sub-Saharan Africa.
Dan Masiga, head of the Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics unit at ICIPE said the discovery will help in advancing tsetse fly control methods which cost farmers billions of shillings in lost livestock incomes.
Last year livestock Permanent Secretary Jacob Ole Miaron said millions of Kenyans in 38 counties including Nakuru were at risk of contracting sleeping sickness due to the increased number of tsetse flies in the country.
Speaking at the launch of the Kenya Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Eradication Council at Emsos village in Mogotio District, Ole Miaron noted that there were high numbers of tsetse-fly infection in some of the towns in rural areas thus the need to carry out preventive measures.
Government figures show that sleeping sickness is endemic in the Lake Victoria basin but remains a major threat to the rest of the country.