Award for services to sleeping sickness

Professor Sue Welburn, Director of the Division of Pathway Medicine has received a prestigious award for services to sleeping sickness by the Hon. Minister of Agriculture Uganda.

Stamp Out Sleeping Sickness (SOS) is a collaborative project involving students and experts from the University of Edinburgh with colleagues from the University of Makerere in Uganda.

The Ugandan government have given recognition to these efforts with the “Collaboration and Networking across Government Award”.

The SOS campaign is tackling what is one of Africa’s biggest public health challenges. Health professionals are battling to prevent the two types of sleeping sickness prevalent in Uganda - acute and chronic - from converging.

Doctors fear that if the two forms merge, the diseases will be impossible to differentiate and treat with drugs that are currently available to them.