1

• Main Authors: M. Hide, B. Bucheton, S. Kamhawi, R. Bras-gonçalves, S. Sundar J. -l. Lemesre, A. -l. Ba
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; Azar; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.417.8585; http://gemi.mpl.ird.fr/PDF/HideWiley2007.pdf

Leishmaniasis has been known for many hundreds of years, with one of the first clinical descriptions made in 1756 by Alexander Russell and called Aleppo boil. Many names correspond to this group of diseases: kala-azar, Dum-dum fever, white leprosy, espundia, pian bois, and so on. Leishmaniases are parasitic diseases spread by the bite of the infected female phlebotomine sand fly (Fig. 6.1). Leishmaniases are caused by approximately 20 species, pathogenic for humans, belonging to the genus Leishmania (kinetoplastids order, Honigberg, 1963) and within 500 known phlebotomine species, of which only some 30 have been positively identified as vectors of these pathogenic species. 6.1.1 Geographic Distribution Human leishmaniases are found on all continents, except Antarctic and Australia. However, cutaneous leishmaniasis was recently revealed in Australian red kangaroos [296]. Approximately 350 million people live in endemic areas, thereby comprising populations at risk, and annual incidence is estimated at 1–1.5 million cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis plus 500,000 cases of visceral leishmaniasis; overall prevalence