Fabrice Courtin, the geographer who hits the nail on the head against sleeping sickness

The year 2025 began with good news for Guinea: since January, human African trypanosomiasis (HAT), better known as "sleeping sickness," is no longer considered a public health problem. This disease, caused by a parasite, the trypanosome, transmitted by the tsetse fly, eventually destroys the nervous system and plunges its untreated victims into a fatal coma. There is now less than 1 case per 10,000 inhabitants in Guinea per year. Seven other West African states have already fallen below this threshold, which the World Health Organization (WHO) defined in 2015 for a disease to no longer be a public health problem.

Whether in Ivory Coast in 2021, in Chad in 2024 or now in Guinea, this success owes a lot to Fabrice Courtin, 48 years old. This researcher from the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD) is neither a doctor, nor an entomologist, nor a parasitologist: he is a geographer. And has an extraordinary tenacity, according to his colleagues. " Fabrice has taken the contribution of his discipline to the highest level in this fight: he has identified the physical geographical conditions (waterways, agriculture, landscape) and human conditions (population density, travel routes) favorable to the development of the disease." admires his friend and colleague Dramane Kaba, entomologist, director of the Pierre-Richet Institute in Bouaké, a branch of the National Institute of Public Health of Côte d'Ivoire.

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