Mysterious 'nodding disease' killing Ugandan kids
Source: Agencies |
July 30, 2012, Monday
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AUGUSTINE Languna's eyes welled up and then his voice failed as he recalled the drowning death of his 16-year-old daughter. The women near him looked away, respectfully avoiding the kind of raw emotion that the head of the family rarely displayed.
"What is traumatizing us," he said after regaining his composure, "is that the well where she died is where we still go for drinking water."
Joyce Labol was found dead about three years ago. As she bent low to fetch water from a pond a half mile from Languna's compound of thatched huts, an uncontrollable spasm overcame her. The teen was one of more than 300 young Ugandans who have died as a result of the mysterious illness that is afflicting more and more children across northern Uganda and in pockets of South Sudan.
The disease is called nodding syndrome, or nodding head disease, because those who have it nod their heads and sometimes go into epileptic-like fits. The disease stunts children's growth and destroys their cognition, rendering them unable to perform small tasks. Some victims don't recognize their own parents. Ugandan officials say some 3,000 children in the East African country suffer from the affliction. Some caregivers even tie nodding syndrome children up to trees so that they don't have to monitor them every minute of the day.
Scientists are working to find the cause of the disease, which is stretching health care capacities here and testing the patience of a community looking for answers as to why it attacks mostly children between the ages of 5 and 15, why it's concentrated in certain communities, and whether it is contagious.
Researchers are focusing on the connection between nodding syndrome and the parasite that causes river blindness, though it is not yet clear there are any links. Onchocerciasis, or river blindness, has been around for a long time, but nodding syndrome is somewhat new.
In Languna's house, eight children have the disease, including a 12-year-old who looks half his age. "We lost a child who was so promising," he said. "But what pains us more is that these ones you see are destined to (die)."
"What is traumatizing us," he said after regaining his composure, "is that the well where she died is where we still go for drinking water."
Joyce Labol was found dead about three years ago. As she bent low to fetch water from a pond a half mile from Languna's compound of thatched huts, an uncontrollable spasm overcame her. The teen was one of more than 300 young Ugandans who have died as a result of the mysterious illness that is afflicting more and more children across northern Uganda and in pockets of South Sudan.
The disease is called nodding syndrome, or nodding head disease, because those who have it nod their heads and sometimes go into epileptic-like fits. The disease stunts children's growth and destroys their cognition, rendering them unable to perform small tasks. Some victims don't recognize their own parents. Ugandan officials say some 3,000 children in the East African country suffer from the affliction. Some caregivers even tie nodding syndrome children up to trees so that they don't have to monitor them every minute of the day.
Scientists are working to find the cause of the disease, which is stretching health care capacities here and testing the patience of a community looking for answers as to why it attacks mostly children between the ages of 5 and 15, why it's concentrated in certain communities, and whether it is contagious.
Researchers are focusing on the connection between nodding syndrome and the parasite that causes river blindness, though it is not yet clear there are any links. Onchocerciasis, or river blindness, has been around for a long time, but nodding syndrome is somewhat new.
In Languna's house, eight children have the disease, including a 12-year-old who looks half his age. "We lost a child who was so promising," he said. "But what pains us more is that these ones you see are destined to (die)."
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