CSI Wireless’ Space-Age GPS Products Aiding in Eradication of
Centuries-Old African Scourge - the Deadly “Sleeping Sickness”

“Sleeping sickness” sounds like ancient African folklore. It is ancient - dating back to the 14th century or even earlier - but it’s also very real. And very deadly.

More than four million people died after a sleeping sickness outbreak in Uganda in 1906. At least 25,000 more Africans continue to die from it each year, and the rapidly growing number of cases of the disease - an estimated 500,000 now compared to 300,000 only four years ago - has experts fearful of another major sleeping sickness epidemic.

“Sleeping sickness has a major impact on the development of rural areas by decimating the labour force and hampering production and work capacity,” reports the World Health Organization. “It remains a major obstacle to development of entire (African) regions.”

By hitching a ride with Africa’s tsetse fly, sleeping sickness has spread itself across 35 sub-Saharan countries. The tsetse - which, like mosquitoes, feed on the blood of humans and livestock - often carries “African trypanosomiasis,” a parasitic disease known as sleeping sickness in humans and as “nagana” in cattle and other livestock.

The disease multiplies in blood and lymph glands, and eventually invades the central nervous system - provoking major neurological disorders that leave victims unable to walk or control other motor functions. They eventually slip into deep comas. Without treatment, death is virtually certain.

Although there are highly effective medical treatments for sleeping sickness, they are expensive - at about US$1,000 per patient - and beyond the reach of most African victims, who live in some of the poorest countries on Earth.

Since the early 20th century, African governments have taken preventative action against sleeping sickness by trying to eradicate the dreaded tsetse fly. Unfortunately, their initiatives have fallen well short of eradication, and many barely achieved temporary suppression.

One method that has achieved limited success has been aerial spraying, or essentially crop dusting. However, to achieve the necessary blanket coverage, the planes must fly extremely long (as much 100 kilometres), straight rows. The planes’ inability to do so has resulted in missed patches that have enabled pockets of tsetse flies to survive and build up their numbers again.

Making aerial spraying even more challenging is the fact it must occur at night - meaning little or no pilot visibility while flying only a few metres above the trees - when temperature inversions ensure that the fine insecticide aerosols descend into, and drift throughout, the tsetse fly habitat.

Until recently, pilots could never fly straight enough to spray the entire landscape. They
tried various navigation systems, but none was sufficiently accurate or cost-effective. And so, for example, even after consistent annual spraying in Botswana’s vast Okavango Delta area from 1972 to 1991, tsetse flies were never eliminated entirely.

But GPS - and more specifically, the Satloc AirStar product line (AirStar 99.5 and Satloc M3) developed by CSI Wireless and its Satloc LLC subsidiary in Scottsdale, Arizona - has become the breakthrough aerial navigation technology in Botswana.

When the Botswana government launched another spraying program in 2001, it hired South Africa-based Orsmond Aviation, whose planes were outfitted with Satloc AirStars. The product had already enabled CSI and Satloc to become the aerial swath guidance industry’s dominant players worldwide.

The AirStars enabled Orsmond pilots to spray with unprecedented precision. Despite flying back and forth on nighttime runs as long as 88 kilometres, pilots experienced variances of only about 15 metres - or 100 times less than what their predecessors experienced during earlier spraying programs in Botswana.

“The introduction of Satloc (technology) was a quantum leap in accuracy,” says Mike Saunders, a consultant hired by Orsmond to manage its spraying work in Botswana.

“The Satloc system is without a doubt the most significant development in aerial spraying for tsetse control,” agrees Reg Allsopp, a British entomologist recruited by the government of Botswana to help manage the spraying program on its behalf.

The program was scheduled to continue for three consecutive years. After only two, the government’s survey teams could no longer find any tsetse flies in the Okavango Delta.

“Without GPS-aided navigation, we would not have done any better (spraying) than we had in the past,” Allsopp says. “We would undoubtedly have left some areas unsprayed - or at least under-dosed, and that would have resulted in tsetse fly survival. Also, there is every possibility that navigational errors would have caused some over-spraying in the Okavango Delta, which is a sensitive ecosystem.”

The insecticide used is so potent that an amount the size of an aspirin tablet is enough to blanket the equivalent of four football fields. The CSI/Satloc equipment worked so effectively that there was never any over-dosing or under-dosing, according to reports from independently appointed environmental experts.

“This level of accuracy is a tribute to Satloc and the associated flow control and emission systems,” Saunders says.

The entire program, involving three months of spraying in 2001 and again in 2002, covered 15,780 square kilometres.

“Each night we flew 6,857 line kilometres - low level, at night,” Saunders recalls. “This equates to the distance from Nairobi to London (or from New York to Los Angeles and then half way back again).”

Saunders says “the precision achieved using Satloc (AirStar products) was a constant source of amazement to visitors.”

Those visitors included government representatives from several other African countries that were closely monitoring the effectiveness of the CSI/Satloc technology. In response to Botswana’s apparently successful eradication of tsetse flies from the Okavanga Delta, after 20 years of failure, Ethiopia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola have all expressed interest in aerial spraying for tsetse control.

Namibia and Botswana are considering a joint GPS-aided aerial spraying operation in a region known as the Caprivi Strip, straddling the two countries’ shared border. It is the only area left in Botswana where there are still tsetse flies. The spraying operation would cover about 7,000 square kilometres.

“I personally have been involved in aerial spraying for tsetse control for over 30 years,” says Saunders. “And while the technique has evolved over the years, the guidance problem was the dominant constraint to guaranteed success.

“It was a nightmare until the arrival of GPS. CSI and Satloc took the problem away, and allowed us to plan total accuracy and reliability, which is the key to success in such a complex technique involving so many scientific disciplines. We can now guarantee operational performance and, all other factors being correct, perhaps even eradication.”