Nouveaux Migrants, nouvelles épidémies
Bernard Surugue
2002 - 26 min - 16 mm - Couleur - France

This film was shot in Brazil in the states of Bahia, Manaus and Rio Grande where every day, migrant families, homeless and without work, try to settle in search of a better future.
Along with them, diseases connected with the environment and poverty also migrate. Thus it is that the settlers who clear the Amazonian forest in order to live expose themselves and their families to the cutaneous form of leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease which is very widespread in the primeval forest. As for those who settle in the insalubrious and overpopulated outskirts of the towns, they will contribute to the current sharp rise in kala azar, the fatal form of these zoo-anthroponoses.
These "vector" diseases are transmitted by the bite of various species of phlebotomus. This tiny insect becomes infected on certain mammals, which are parasite reservoirs. For the cutaneous form, it is most often rodents but also sometimes big mammals such as sloths or anteaters which live in the forest. For the visceral form, the reservoir is dogs.
In Brazil kala azar is becoming urbanised and AIDS is spreading beyond the towns. The meeting of these two diseases produces an alarming explosion of cases of urban leishmaniasis connected with the HIV virus. WHO experts have produced forecasts about co-infections of tropical diseases with AIDS and foresee a renewed outbreak of the epidemic and the diseases which are connected with it.