Sleeping sickness, meet the three-tablet cure — free for every patient in Africa

Sleeping sickness once meant weeks of hospitalization and grueling treatment in remote African villages. Now it can mean three tablets, taken in a single day, at home. The drug acoziborole — the first oral cure for both early and advanced stages of the disease — was approved in the Democratic Republic of the Congo this June after trials in the DRC and Guinea showed cure rates up to 96% at 18 months. Developed with open science by DNDi and Sanofi, it will be donated free of charge, and studies are already testing it in children as young as one. The goal: wipe the disease out by 2030.