Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) is talking about its work tackling sleeping sickness which threatens 60 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa.

BA Festival of Science talks opened on Saturday and finishes with theTropical Medicine: Present and Future discussion on sleeping sickness on Thursday.

The disease which is carried by the tsetse fly is believed to kill 60,000 people every year.

Professor Mike Lehane will highlight LSTM's studies of the tsetse fly, which carries sleeping sickness.

It is so called because after initial symptoms it attacks victims' sleep cycles leaving sufferers fatigued during the day and alert at night.

According to studies, 60,000 people are estimated to be infected with sleeping sickness, which can also be transmitted through blood transfusions and pregnancy.

Studies at LSTM have included looking at the odours that repel the fly from certain animals.

Without treatment sleeping sickness is fatal.

LSTM is affiliated to Liverpool University and was one of the first schools dedicated to tropical medicine to open in the world.