The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Government Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, Boehringer Ingelheim and GALVmed announce the creation of a new partnership to work on solutions to combat African animal trypanosomiasis (AAT).

AAT is a disease of vertebrate animals affecting cattle, water buffalo, sheep, goats, horses, pigs, dogs, and other species. In Africa, AAT is estimated to threaten more than 50 million cattle in known tse-tse endemic areas. However, as many as 90 million cattle are threatened if cattle outside the tse-tse belt—potentially at risk because of cattle movements, transhumance and mechanical transmission of T. vivax by biting flies—are also considered. AAT is estimated to kill as many as 3 million cattle annually.

Thanks to strong collaborations, great progress has been made in the control of African human trypanosomiasis which is targeted for elimination by the World Health Organization (WHO) (WHO, 2020a). In contrast, control of AAT has been limited.

AAT is complex and more challenging to control than human trypanosomiasis for many reasons including the diversity of host species, parasites and vector flies involved, and reservoirs of infection in wildlife. Existing control tools are considered to be inadequate: there are no vaccines, no cost-effective pen-side diagnostic tools, and drugs currently used to treat AAT are associated with problems of counterfeiting and drug resistance.

The newly announced partnership between The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the UK Government Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, Boehringer Ingelheim and GALVmed aims to develop and make available a new solution to address AAT.

The partners will conduct research and collaborate with other academic and international projects to promote and develop solutions to address AAT. The partnership's aspiration is to be able to launch a new solution for AAT before 2030.