Congenital trypanosomiasis in a child born in London

A female infant of 22 months was referred to the Hospital for Sick Children, London, because of delayed psychomotor development. Extensive investigations revealed no cause, but eventually trypanosomiasis was diagnosed. The infant had not been outside the UK, but her mother came from Zaire, where the disease is endemic, but had lived in Kinshasa, where there is no sleeping sickness. It is thought, that the mother may have been asymptomatically infected by a fresh-blood transfusion four years earlier, since no other source of infection was apparent.