ONCHOCERCIASIS IN BRAZIL: NEW FINDINGS AMONG THE YANOMAMA INDIANS1,2

As previously reported,2 an endemic focus of onchocerciasis, lhe so-called "river blindness " widespread in parts of Africa but limited to a few isolated parts of lhe Americas, has been discovered in Brazil. The survey of Yanomama lndians described on these pages represents part of a continuing effort to determine lhe extent of lhe affected region. lntroduction The fact that the three missionaries had lived for many years in close proximity to tribes of Onchocerciasis was first reported in Brazil in the Yanomama group, whose villages occupy 1967 by Bearzoti, et ai. (1), who described the widespread territory in the area of the Brazil-case of a three-year-old child with two nodules Venezuela border, led Moraes and Chaves (4) to in the scalp. The child had c1early acquired tlie advance the hypothesis that,onchocerciasis was disease in the Federal Territory of Roraima. endemic in the region, that the entire Yano-Possibly because of difficulty determining just mama group was involved, and that the disease where the case had arisen, however, the dis- had probably come into the area Eram Vene