Russian woman with her daughter contracted a deadly disease in Zanzibar
Perm resident Natalya Pashina and her two-year-old daughter, who were vacationing in Zanzibar, contracted African trypanosomiasis or “sleeping sickness,” Ura.ru reports.
The family traveled to Zanzibar in November 2020, where the woman and her child were bitten by insects. After the New Year, already in Perm, the girl's temperature rose to almost 40 degrees and a fever began. The family asked for medical help: experts found in the organism of their daughter and her mother traces of a bite of a tsetse fly, a tropical parasite of trypanosomes.
The girl was admitted to a local hospital: she is under the supervision of doctors in the intensive care unit. According to Pashina, her daughter “has to be taken out with droppers”, since she is “in an amoebic state.” The child is going to be sent to Moscow for treatment.
Note that in the absence of the necessary treatment, “sleeping sickness” can be fatal. It spreads through the bites of an infected tsetse fly that is native to the African continent.
Earlier it was reported that the tsetse fly is dying out due to global warming. According to statistics, the prevalence of African trypanosomiasis has decreased accordingly.