The effectiveness of active population screening and treatment for sleeping sickness control in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Background: The human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) control programme of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) uses mass screening with the card agglutination test for trypanosomes (CATT). We looked at the contribution of CATT and improved parasitological confirmation to the effectiveness of screening and treatment.

Method: The effectiveness of the screening and treatment process is measured by the percentage of HAT cases that is effectively cured after a single round of screening.