[Interepidemic surveillance of a cutaneous leishmaniasis focus in Senegal].

The cutaneous leishmaniasis is rampant in an endemo -epidemic way in the region of Thiès, Senegal. At the occasion of an epidemic observed between 1975 and 1978, the ecological study of the focus of Keur Moussa , led by Dedet and al., permitted to discover, for the first time in West Africa, the structure of a cutaneous leishmaniasis focus. The most important part of the present laboratory work consists in the observation of that wild anthropozoonosis due to Leishmania tropica major, having as vector Phlebotomus duboscqi and the rodents Mastomys erythroleucus , Tatera gambiana and Arvicanthis niloticus as reservoir. The close study of the reservoir populations and of the vectors should enable us to avoid a new epidemic outburst.