title: RELAPSING FEVER, A DISAPPEARING CAUSE OF FEVER AND MATERNAL DEATH IN SENGEREMA, TANZANIA, EAST AFRICA.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To study the incidence of tick borne relapsing fever (TBRF) during the last 50 years, once like malaria an endemic disease in Sengerema, Tanzania.
  
  
  METHODS
  By analyzing the annual reports, focusing on the number of admissions, maternal deaths, blood smears of patients with fever for Borrelia.
  
  
  METHODS
  Sengerema district, Tanzania.
  
  
  METHODS
  Admissions in Sengerema Hospital due to TBRF.
  
  
  METHODS
  From 1960 to 2010, we analyzed the incidence of TBRF.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Forty annual admissions in the sixties/seventies, 200 in the eighties (range from 37 in 1964 to 455 in 1988), dropping to 30 in the nineties. For the last nine years no Borrelia spirochetes were found in blood smears at the laboratory anymore and no admissions for TBRF were registered. The number of maternal deaths due to relapsing fever decreased simultaneously; the last one recordedwas in 2002.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  During the last century, we have witnessed the disappearing of tick borne relapsing fever in Sengerema. Increase of gold mining, improved local economy, housing and standards of living after the nineties resulted in an almost complete eradication of the incidence of TBRF.
authors: Sengerema Hospital, Mwanza region, Tanzania.
authors: P
authors: P
authors: Melkert
authors: L
authors: L
authors: Kahema
authors: J
authors: J
authors: van der Velden
authors: J
authors: J
authors: van Roosmalen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001898:Borrelia / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000472:pathogenicity; D003140:Communicable Disease Control / Q000706:statistics & numerical data / Q000639:trends; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008288:Malaria / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D008428:Maternal Mortality / Q000639:trends; D011247:Pregnancy; D012061:Relapsing Fever / Q000097:blood / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000209:etiology / Q000401:mortality; D013636:Tanzania / Q000453:epidemiology