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African sleeping sickness

Some 60 million people, mainly in Central and West Africa, suffer from African sleeping sickness, an infectious disease transmitted by the tsetse fly. The fly's saliva can transfer several thousand pathogens, also known as trypanosomes, into the human body. The disease can go unnoticed for months or even years. By the time the symptoms – confusion, sensory disturbances, coordination difficulties – finally emerge, the disease is already at an advanced stage in which the parasite has infected the brain, and the central nervous system is also affected. African sleeping sickness is fatal if it goes untreated.

We support the World Health Organization in its efforts to defeat this typical poverty-related disease. We supply the WHO free-of-charge with a drug containing the active substance suramin; we also support programs of research into tropical diseases.

A new combination therapy promises success

A combination therapy using drugs containing the active substances nifurtimox from Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals and eflornithine from another pharmaceutical company has proved promising in clinical trials for the fight against the disease. As a result, the WHO added this combination therapy to the list of "essential drugs" in May 2009.

Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals is providing the WHO with 400,000 tablets a year of its drug with the active ingredient nifurtimox over a period of five years, so as to support a combination therapy with eflornithine in the affected African countries. The WHO plans to offer the drugs in combination with training measures to ensure access to the combination therapy.