Catherine Sakala

Research area: Focusing on practical measures to control tsetse fly in rural areas.

Catherine Sakala, a tsetse fly control biologist with Zambia’s Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, is determined to help control trypanosomosis in cattle and humans. Trypanosomosis is the most pervasive and serious cattle disease in sub-Saharan Africa, which kills between three and seven million cattle annually and costs farmers millions of dollars in lost production and treatment costs. It is transmitted mainly by blood-feeding tsetse flies that infect susceptible animals and humans with the causative trypanosome parasite. An estimated 48,000 people die annually from the disease, known as sleeping sickness in humans, according to the International Livestock Research Institute.

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