The Fatal Sleep

Sleeping sickness, also known as human African trypanosomiasis, is one of Africa's major killers. It puts 60 million people at risk of infection, occurs in 36 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and claims the lives of many thousands of people every year.
Transmitted by the tsetse fly, trypanosomiasis affects both humans and cattle. The animal form of the disease severely limits livestock production and farming, and in people the toxic effects of the treatment can be as painful and dangerous as the disease itself.
Existing in the shadow of AIDS and malaria, it is an overlooked disease, largely ignored by pharmaceutical companies and neglected by the western world.
The Fatal Sleep traces a medical passion over 30 years, taking the reader on an exciting and captivating medical and scientific journey into Africa.
Peter Kennedy has devoted much of his working life to researching sleeping sickness in Africa, and this first-hand account shares his trials and experiences, evoking our empathy with the affected patients, together with an explanation of the disease, including its history and its future. Interweaved with African geography and history, his compassionate story reveals what it is like to be a young doctor falling in love with Africa, and tells of his building of a vocation in the search for a cure for this cruel disease.