In June, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Doyle Foundation, and a Host-Pathogen Consortium funded by the Wellcome Trust sponsored a four-day workshop on People, Mice and Livestock, the Story of Trypanosomosis in Africa. The disease kills people and cattle across a swath of sub-Saharan Africa as large as the continental United States.

Medical as well as veterinary experts from diverse disciplines-from cell, molecular, parasite and vector biology to genetics, immunology and vaccinology to biochemistry, bioinformatics and proteomics-shared their latest research findings, explored synergies and identified research gaps in an effort to combat trypanosomosis. Young technicians and scientists were among the participants.

Deo Mdumu Birungi, a graduate fellow from the Ugandan Ministry of Agriculture studying for a PhD in animal breeding and genetics at ILRI, described the meeting as "a fantastic opportunity. We don't normally get to participate in such workshops with well established international scientists."

For over 30 years, ILRI has been in the forefront of the battle to better control trypanosomosis, an "orphan" tropical disease of livestock and their keepers. "The disease is as important as the parasite is biologically fascinating," said John Donelson, Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Iowa.

Terry Pearson, Professor of Biochemistry and Microbiology at the University of Victoria, describing the heroic attempts of scientists to find ways to control this disease and its tsetse vector over the past century, said, "No continent remains dominated by one livestock disease to the extent that Africa is by trypanosomosis."

African animal trypanosomosis costs the continent up to $5 billion a year while the number of new cases of the human form of the disease is estimated to be 300,000 people, most of whom will die untreated. The toll on Africa's economy is also significant. In an article in Nature magazine in 1991, John Brady argued that "The tsetse fly and the trypanosome parasites it carries have kept Africa from undergoing the agro-economic revolution that occurred in the Middle East around 4000 B.C."

ILRI will be facilitating similar meetings as host of the Hub of the Biosciences Eastern and Central Africa Network, which is supported by the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). The Doyle Foundation, ILRI and a Host-Pathogen Consortium funded by the Wellcome Trust cosponsored the African Trypanosomosis Workship. The Doyle Foundation and ILRI produced DVDs of the meeting, which are being sent to participants as well as other stakeholders.