Wemcast

WEM founder Mark Hannaford interviews Ilan Moss the maker of a remarkable film - A doctor’s dream: A pill for sleeping sickness Winner at Health for All Film Festival Dr. Victor Kande Betu Kumesu is a Congolese doctor who has spent the last 40 years of his life working to combat sleeping sickness and led clinical trials for fexinidazole, the first oral-only drug that is expected to accelerate the elimination of the disease in Sub-Saharan Africa. As the former director of the DRC’s sleeping sickness program, Dr. Kande spent decades treating patients with sleeping sickness when the only available drug was melarsoprol, an older, arsenic-based medicine that kills one in every 20 patients. . Frustrated by the lack of medicines and refusing to accept that melarsoprol was the only option, Dr. Kande partnered with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and their newly formed Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) to research better sleeping sickness treatments, which led to a 15-year collaboration and clinical tri