Visceral Leishmaniasis, alternatively called Kala-azar – the word “kala” means black, referring to the black pigmentation of the skin, and “azar” means prolonged fever or ailment – has been known to occur on the Indian subcontinent for more than 180 years. The first description of an epidemic of this disease was reported in 1824–1825 in Jessore (now Bangladesh) and involved approximately 7,500 fatalities. The global incidence of kala-azar or visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is at approximately 500,000 new cases per year. Ninety percent of these cases are from India and the neighboring countries of Bangladesh and Nepal on the Indian subcontinent. Kala-azar is the vector bone disease transmissible to human to human including animal via the blood drawing behavior of female sandfly akin to mosquito. Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, so called Tri-area, is the highly endemic area and people in poorest in the poverty is at risk for Kala-azar which suffers not only their health but also enormously interferes social and economic activities in this area. The cooperative action by governments in Tri-area is necessary to eradicate kala-azar for the management of infrastructure of socio-economical aspects. On the other hand, Bangladesh does not catch up with the control level of India and Nepal because of the recent unstable condition of politics.

Therefore, this study is focusing on Bangladesh kala-azar eradication program in cooperation with ICDDR,B, the world famous non-governmental organization in Bangladesh, posting three possible outputs.

This Japanese cooperative study will certainly become the milestone of infectious control program for global health, NTDs, despatched from Japanese government with the establishment of sustainable infectious control technologies in Bangladesh, simultaneously clarifying the scientific background of kala-azar and PKDL.