Since São Paulo registered its first human cases in 1999 in the municipalities of Araçatuba and Birigui in the northwest of that state, visceral leishmaniasis has been spreading toward the coast. In 2017, the states of Rondônia and Amapá recorded the first cases of domestic dogs with leishmaniasis, and the cities of Florianópolis and Porto Alegre saw their first cases in humans. In 2016, the MS registered 3,626 cases in humans and 275 deaths across the country. Caused by the protozoan Leishmania infantum chagasi and transmitted by bites from the female insects that transmit it, mainly the phlebotomine sandfly species Lutzomyia longipalpis (known locally as the birigui), the disease is currently present in all major regions, with almost half of the cases (47%) concentrated in the northeast of the country, according to the Brazilian Ministry of Health (MS). Visceral leishmaniasis, which has been thought of as a rural disease restricted to Brazil’s northeastern region up to the 1980s, is moving toward increasingly larger urban centers. Dennis Kunkel Microscopy / Science photo library A colony of Leishmania, the protozoa that causes visceral leishmaniasis Dennis Kunkel Microscopy / Science photo library
