Evidence of the absence of human African trypanosomiasis in two northern districts of Uganda: Analyses of cattle, pigs and tsetse flies for the presence of Trypanosoma brucei gambiense.

The lack of T. b. gambiense positives in cattle, pigs and tsetse accords with the low prevalence of g-HAT in the human population. We found no evidence that livestock are acting as reservoir hosts. However, this study highlights the limitations of current methods of detecting and identifying T. b. gambiense which relies on a single copy-gene to discriminate between the different sub-species of T. brucei s.l.