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Monday, March 3, 2014

How much there is to know about Sleeping Sickness

I know that in Becca A's recent post she wrote about Sleeping Sickness. I kind of knew what that was, but didn't really know that much about it. This is when I decided to try and find out more information about it. This disease is found commonly in East and West Africa. There are two stages. The first is when the bug bites you. The disease is in your body, but hasn't crossed to the Central Nervous System. The second is after the disease goes to your Central Nervous system. This is when some of the symptoms start to show such as the place where you got bitten swelling up and getting red, lymph nodes all over your body, anxiety, change of mood, and severe drowsiness. If not treated you can go into a coma and die. If you show symptoms of sleeping sickness or in general just don't feel well you should go see a doctor immediately. The sooner you get treatment the less likely you are to have the sleeping sickness get severe. You should also have examinations a lot, so if you have a relapse of the disease it can be detected. If you were to visit Africa you should be really careful if you are in rural areas because that's where the disease is most commonly found. Basically if I went to Africa I would take a lot of safety measures against these diseases. If you went to Africa how would you make sure you weren't infected?

2 comments:

  1. Sleeping Sickness may seem simple on the outside, but once you dig in to the more complicated stuff, you find that, after the typical symptoms of headaches, sores, and typical cold material, you begin to have daytime sleep episodes and nighttime periods of wakefulness. It gets to your head... quite literally, and messes with the way you think and how you act, such as giving you random bouts of violent intent. Much of Africa's population has contracted already or is prone to this mind-boggling disease.

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  2. If I ever travel to Africa I will take long sleeve shirts, long pants, insect repellant, and bug nets to help insure my safety against Sleeping Sickness. The professional name for Sleeping Sickness is African trypanosomiasis. The first few most noticeable symptoms is fast weight loss, fever weakness, swelled joints, itchiness, and muscle aches. The best safety measures that you can take are check out any car before you get in it because tsetse flies are attracted to motion and dust from behind moving vehicles, and wear long thick clothing.

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