Sleeping sickness: The consequence of inappropriate diagnosis flow chart in case report

3National program to fight against human African trypanosomiasis, Moundou, Chad. 4 OMS, Equipe Inter-Pays, Libreville, Gabon. 5 Association against Trypanosomiasis in Africa (ATA), Château de Brives, 39700 Lavans-Saint Lupicin, France. Accepted 18 December, 2012 Sleeping sickness is a vector-borne parasitic disease with variable, non-specific and inconstant symptoms. Thus, clinical signs are insufficient for diagnosis. Definite diagnosis relies on evidence demonstration of trypanosome in body fluids through parasitological techniques. For reasons related to costs, workload and technical incapacities, these technics are not always performed and sleeping sickness examination is thus limited to serological and clinical investigations. We report a false alarm due to incorrect diagnosis about a sudden outbreak of sleeping sickness in a focus under control. This report shows that inadequate diagnosis methods can lead to downward and upward errors in the prevalence of a disease. There is a need to reinforce material and technical capacities of health centers in endemic areas.