30/01/2026
Today is World Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Day. The new Escape the Neglect mini-documentary by Devex shows what it looks like when a disease is no longer everywhere, but not quite gone either.
Sleeping sickness is a parasitic disease that, if left untreated, is fatal. Not long ago, it was a death sentence for thousands of people. Within a single generation, it is now on the brink of elimination.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the country most affected, that change becomes tangible. Treatment has moved from painful, high-risk injections and long hospital stays to pills. And soon, possibly, to a single-dose oral cure.
In the documentary, former patients and long-standing partners share what that shift means in real life, including Dr. Erick Miaka and Dr. Alain Funkisia (PLNTHA), Dr. Wilfried Mutombo Kalonji Kaljoni (DNDi), Dr. Dieudonne Mumba (INRB), and Elena Nicco, Senior Scientific Fellow at ITM.
“We are moving faster from screening to treatment. That’s a game changer,” Elena says. "Faster means fewer people lost, broader treatment coverage, and quicker progress towards elimination."
That progress rests on decades of collaboration and on tools that rarely make headlines. In the video, you'll catch glimpse of a small machine with a rotating plastic card. That’s the CATT test, a simple blood test used in the field to screen for sleeping sickness. Developed at ITM in the late 1970s, it made large-scale, field-based screening possible across West and Central Africa. Not commercially attractive. Still indispensable. To this day, we continue to produce and supply millions of tests because early detection remains everything.
World NTD Day is also the national day of the fight against sleeping sickness in the DRC. This documentary is a reminder of what sustained partnership can achieve, and how close “the end” can be when science meets persistence, and local leadership.
🎥 From risk to remedy, watch the Devex mini-documentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6ye0jNMwuo
🤝 L’Institut National de Recherche Biomédical - INRB Kinshasa, Programme National de Lutte contre Trypanosomiase Humaine Africaine (DRC), Diplomatie.Belgium, Gates Foundation, Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), Sanofi
For decades, sleeping sickness treatment was nearly as dangerous as the disease itself. In the Democratic Republic of Congo — home to the world’s highest bur...
