Human diseases transmitted by Culicidae in the South-west Indian Ocean Islands.

South-West Indian Ocean islands were inhabited at the beginning and free from all kind of vector In Madagascar, Mayotte, Moheli and Anjouan, malaria vectors were carried by the first settlements. According to epidemics, the anopheles arrived in 1867 in Mauritius, 1869 in La Reunion and 1920 in Grande Comore. Rodrigues, Saint-Brandon and the Seychelles are still free from malaria vectors. In the coastal part of Madagascarcar and in Comores archipelago, malaria is stable with a permanent transmission. Unstable malaria is seasonaly transmitted in the high territories of Madagascar; it was the same in Mauritius and Reunion island before the eradication campaign. Lymphatic filariasis is quoted in Madagascar; but Comores archipelago is an area with high transmission. The incidence of the disease is moderate in La Reunion and Mauritius and very low in Chagos and Seychelles archipelagos. There is no transmission in Rodrigues and St Brandon. Epidemics of dengue were described during the second part of the XIXth century in Mauritius and La Reunion, then in 1943 in Mayotte. But the disease was controled in the fifties by the antimalaria campaign. A new epidemy appeared in Seychelles by the end of 1976 and then in Reunion and Mauritius next year. An isolated outbreak was described in Grande Comore only in 1994.