Scientists say they have discovered a promising treatment for sleeping sickness, a killer disease that infects  about 60,000 people in Africa a year. British and Canadian experts say drugs could attack the parasite  causing the illness needs to survive. They say the drug could be ready for human medical test in about 18 months. The disease, spread by the bite of a fly, is caused by a parasite attacking the central nervous system. It has similar symptoms  to malaria , making it difficult to diagnose. Left untreated, it moves to the brain, resulting in mental confusion and final death The "breakthrough" came at the University of Dundee in Scotland, where scientists were offered money to research diseases ignored by major drugs companies. Professor Paul Wyatt, director of the programme, said: "This is one of the most significant findings made in recent years in terms of drug discovery and development for ignored diseases." He said the research, published in the journal Nature, represented "significant progress" in the development of a full blown drug against the disease. The World Health Organization said there are between 50,000 and 70,000 cases of the disease a year, with a further 60 million people at risk of infection. The research in Dundee was _ by partners at the University of York in England and the Structural Genomics Consortium in Toronto, Canada. The two drugs currently available to treat sleeping sickness both have problems. One is with side effects that kill one in 20 patients and the other is costly, only partially effective and requires long-time hospital treatment, the scientists said. We can learn from the passage that  _   .
big drug companies play an important role in the research of the new drug people who get infected with the disease are mentally disturbed among 200 people infected with the disease, 5 may die because of the old drug Professor Paul Wyatt may be a professor at the University of York