Hepatitis E Virus Infections among Patients with Acute Febrile Jaundice in Burkina Faso.

Hepatitis E virus infection is a significant public health problem in many parts of the world including Africa. We tested serum samples from 900 patients in Burkina Faso presenting with febrile icterus. They all tested negative for yellow fever, but those from 23/900 (2.

Reducing Human-Tsetse Contact Significantly Enhances the Efficacy of Sleeping Sickness Active Screening Campaigns: A Promising Result in the Context of Elimination.

Background: Control of gambiense sleeping sickness, a neglected tropical disease targeted for elimination by 2020, relies mainly on mass screening of populations at risk and treatment of cases. This strategy is however challenged by the existence of undetected reservoirs of parasites that contribute to the maintenance of transmission. In this study, performed in the Boffa disease focus of Guinea, we evaluated the value of adding vector control to medical surveys and measured its impact on disease burden.

The impact of clinical research activities on communities in rural Africa: the development of the Clinical Research Unit of Nanoro (CRUN) in Burkina Faso.

Background: The opportunities for developing new drugs and vaccines for malaria control look brighter now than ten years ago. However, there are few places in sub-Saharan Africa with the necessary infrastructure and expertise to support such research in compliance to international standards of clinical research (ICH-GCP). The Clinical Research Unit of Nanoro (CRUN) was founded in 2008 to provide a much-needed GCP-compliant clinical trial platform for an imminent large-scale Phase 3 malaria vaccine trial.

[The Burkinabe experience of the creation of a Community Advisory Committee to improve the support of HIV research projects].

Introduction: Community Advisory Committees (CAC) have become indicators of good community involvement in health research all over the world. CACs have been developed only recently in several Sub-Saharan African countries. Many countries wonder about how to create and ensure good functioning of a community advisory committee.

[Medium-term acceptability of HIV vaccine clinical trials in Burkina Faso: stakeholders' perceptions].

Introduction: The ideal response to HIV would be the discovery of an effective vaccine. Evaluation of the benefit/risk balance of this vaccine must include Africa, where the majority of HIV infections are observed. This study was designed to identify the perceptions and the medium-term acceptability of a potential vaccine trial in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso).

[Settlements, landscapes, and risks of sleeping sickness at the mouth of the Rio Pongo in Guinea-Conakry].

Seeking to understand how humans, by the settlements they create (among other means), influence the operation of the pathogen system of sleeping sickness, the authors performed a diachronic analysis of the landscape and settlement dynamics by comparing topographic maps from 1957, a satellite image from 2004, and georeferenced censuses from 2009 and 2001. It appears that the extreme mobility of the population between the continent and the islands is the principal cause for the continuation of this disease at the mouth of the Rio Pongo.

[Epidemiological situation of yellow fever in Burkina Faso from 2003 to 2008].

Despite the existence of antiamaril vaccine in the routine Expanded Program of Immunization (EPI) in Burkina Faso, yellow fever cases still occur in the country. In collaboration with WHO, the national health authorities set up a surveillance system through the national reference laboratory in Centre Muraz (Bobo-Dioulasso). All samples of feverish icterus cases of the 63 health districts of the country were analysed in this lab for M Immunoglobulin using Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (Elisa).

[Impact of the dynamics of human settlement on tsetse and trypanosomosis distribution in the Mouhoun river basin (Burkina Faso)].

In Burkina Faso, the Mouhoun river basin (formerly "Black Volta") constitutes a historical focus of Human (HAT) and Animal (AAT) African Trypanosomoses, both transmitted by tsetse flies. Nowadays, HAT seems to have disappeared from this area, while AAT still causes severe economic losses. In order to explain these different epidemiological situations, we undertook a geographical study based on the analysis of aerial pictures between 1952 and 2007, and field surveys to collect medical, entomological, and veterinary data on trypanosomoses.

[Population growth and global warming: impacts on tsetse and trypanosomoses in West Africa].

Demographic evolution, climatic change and economical development that happened in West Africa during the XXth century had a lot of consequences on human settlement and landscape. These changes have in turn an impact on the pathogenic system of human and animal trypanosomoses. Since last century, the northern tsetse distribution limit has shifted towards the south, probably due to a decrease in rainfall combined to the impact of human pressure.

[Main characteristics of the street food sector in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso].

To investigate the sector of food sold in the streets of Bobo-Dioulasso and identify relevant information for action, a survey on knowledge and practices of street food vendors and consumers was conducted in June 2005. Data have been collected in 928 street food selling posts. Structured questionnaires were used to collect data from 874 street vendors and 2474 consumers.

Year to year and seasonal variations in vector bionomics and malaria transmission in a humid savannah village in west Burkina Faso.

A longitudinal entomological study was carried out from 1999 to 2001 in Lena, a humid savannah village in the western region of Burkina Faso in order to establish malaria vector bionomics and the dynamics of malaria transmission. In the first year, malaria transmission was mainly due to An. gambiae s.

Major reduction of malaria morbidity with combined vitamin A and zinc supplementation in young children in Burkina Faso: a randomized double blind trial.

Background: Vitamin A and zinc are crucial for normal immune function, and may play a synergistic role for reducing the risk of infection including malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum.

Methods: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of a single dose of 200 000 IU of vitamin A with daily zinc supplementation was done in children of Sourkoudougou village, Burkina Faso. Children aged from 6 to 72 months were randomized to receive a single dose of 200 000 IU of vitamin A plus 10 mg elemental zinc, six days a week (n = 74) or placebo (n = 74) for a period of six months.