[Evaluation of 10 years of research on S. mansoni schistosomiasis A in the French West Indies].

From 1971 until 1982, we studied the ecological factors which stead fast a perennial schistosomiasis in Guadeloupe on an exhaustive mode. More recently, we start a similar investigation in Martinique. In Guadeloupe the single vector of Schistosoma mansoni is the snail Biomphalaria glabrata which is an ubiquist species. But the transmission to man is restricted to the "canal-sewers" where faeces are dropped and not in the rivers of Basse-Terre or the ponds of Grande-Terre. Moreover, the infection is possible only during the hottest hours of the day, when the cercariae get out of the snail. We built a "cercariometer" with which we are able to know the number of cercariae per litre in a given place at every hour of day and night. The black rat (and not the grey rat!) seems, alone, able to maintain the life-cycle of the parasite, at least in the mangrove forests. It is now possible to "clone" S. mansoni by sporocysts transplantation in non-infected snails. The biological control of B. glabrata populations is possible by sterilizating Trematodes such as Ribeiroia guadeloupensis. A new built irrigation reservoir in Grande-Terre give a chance of spread for the endemy in an area which was, till now, unharmed.