[Three patients with African sleeping sickness following a visit to Tanzania]

Three Dutch tourists, a man aged 57 and two women aged 55 en 52 years, acquired African trypanosomiasis in the national parks of Tanzania. Two, without central nervous system involvement, were cured after treatment in the Netherlands, albeit one after having suffered a relapse. In the third patient, involvement of the central nervous system was diagnosed in Africa and she was treated with melarsoprol. After an apparently uneventful recovery she was readmitted with cerebral complaints and symptoms. While being treated with melarsoprol she lapsed into coma. She died following repatriation. An epidemic of trypanosomiasis is currently raging through Central Africa. In several western countries, trypanosomiasis has been diagnosed recently in tourists who visited Tanzania.