La trypanosomiase humaine en Afrique occidentale: Racines géographiques d'une maladie

Human sleeping-sickness in West Africa : its geographic roots.- The last sleeping-sickness epidemic in West Africa ended around the middle of the present century after laying waste a wide area (over 200,000 patients in French West Africa in 1939). A few centres of infection subsist to this day. The ecology of its vector, the Glossina fly, makes it a riverine forest disease which appears whenever men, through their activities and because of the density of population, come into close contact with the vector. The re-occupation of formerly deserted valleys tends to bring about a rebirth of dangerous epidemiological situations.