Skip to main content Skip to navigation

HAT Modelling and Economic Predictions for Policy (HAT MEPP)

Human African Trypanosomiasis Modelling and Economic Predictions for Policy (HAT MEPP) is a research project started in 2018, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to support global efforts to eliminate gambiense human African trypanosomiasis (gHAT or sleeping sickness).

Sleeping sickness is a tropical disease found in West and Central Africa, transmitted to humans by tsetse (biting flies), that is typically fatal without treatment. To date, interventions have reduced sleeping sickness cases to historically low levels and the World Health Organization (WHO) has set a goal to eliminate transmission of the infection by 2030.

HAT MEPP research will continue to 2028 with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Project Aims

  • To provide decision support to national programmes in Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea and Uganda regarding intervention strategies and cost effectiveness, taking into account resource constraints
  • To deliver an elimination investment case (EIC) for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to understand the feasibility and associated costs of elimination of transmission of gHAT.
  • Support analyses of on-going Trypa-No! and TrypElim (gHAT elimination) programmes, including cost, new diagnostics and interventions.

HAT MEPP team

Our team, led by Dr Kat Rock, consists of six mathematical modellers, four health economists, a statistician, a software developer and a scientific project manager. The team is based at the University of Warwick and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH).

Click to discover more about the team.

Project Results

The team's work is helping to support ongoing interventions against gHAT and the global efforts to eliminate the disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Uganda and Chad.

We are also interested in the impact that infection reservoirs and intervention interruptions could have on gHAT transmission. Click to explore our results.

Graphical User Interface

Our gHAT GUI (Graphical User Interface) is designed to provide easy and user-friendly access to the data and results from the HAT MEPP research project.

Booklet & Newsletter

Here you can find our HAT MEPP 1 project booklet from 2020 and the annual HAT MEPP newsletter from 2022 and 2023 summarising some of the team's key findings from the past four years.

Publications

Here you will find a list of our publications as well as publication summaries in English and French.

Contact us

Group leader: Dr Kat Rock

Scientific Project Manager: Dr Emily Crowley