CALCUTTA, 22 January 2005 — West Bengal authorities have launched a massive hunt for a man diagnosed as suffering from sleeping sickness — a chronic, progressive disease which, unless treated, usually results in death.

Health Minister, Surya Kant Mishra, yesterday admitted his officials are panicky because it is the first time tiny single-celled parasites called trypanosomes, which cause sleeping sickness, have been detected in India.

Sleeping sickness, or Trypanosomiasis, is rampant in sub-Saharan Africa. The disease has never struck India before.

But parasites were discovered this week in conventional blood tests conducted by a pathological laboratory in Canning, 40 km from Calcutta. A Canning doctor ordered the blood tests to ascertain the cause of persistent fever. But there is no trace of the patient, who doctors fear, might die as drugs for treating sleeping sickness are not available in West Bengal or anywhere in India.

According to reports, the Canning resident got his blood tested at a private pathological laboratory not far from his home. The pathologist was so shocked finding trypanosomes that he sent the slides to Calcutta’s flagship government-run S.S.K.M. Hospital.

S.S.K.M. Hospital authorities confirmed the findings and alerted Calcutta’s School of Tropical Medicine. STM tipped off the West Bengal Health Ministry which has launched a massive search to track down the man suffering from sleeping sickness.

Health department spokesman, Prabhakar Chattopadhyay, told Arab News that he contacted the Canning doctor who sent the man to the pathologist. But the doctor is not aware of the man’s whereabouts.

“We must find him. Unless we get him, we are clueless about how he got infected. Once we know where he lives, we can screen the area for tsetse flies”, Prabhakar explained.

Tsetse flies — carriers of sleeping sickness — have never been sighted anywhere in India. The flies — endemic to 36 African countries — carry trypanosomes. When it bites, the trypanosomes invade the blood of humans and livestock unleashing devastation.

“Even if he got infected somewhere in Africa, we must conduct blood tests in his locality to find out if others have somehow got infected.”