"the malaria parasite, Plasmodium vivax, is endemic in west and central Africa, a region from which it was previously thought to be almost completely absent"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23017235

Int J Parasitol. 2012 Sep 24. pii: S0020-7519(12)00219-6. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpara.2012.08.005. [Epub ahead of print]

African Plasmodium vivax: Distribution and origins.

Culleton R, Carter R.

Source

Malaria Unit, Institute of Tropical Medicine (NEKKEN), Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan. Electronic address: richard@nagasaki-u.ac.jp.

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that the malaria parasite, Plasmodium vivax, is endemic in west and central Africa, a region from which it was previously thought to be almost completely absent due to the very high prevalence of the Duffy negative phenotype in the local human populations. Furthermore, P. vivax, or very closely related parasites, has been identified in both chimpanzees and gorillas from this region. In this review, we discuss the implications of these findings for the current understanding of the origins of P. vivax as a human parasite. With the support of new evidence from mitochondrial genome sequencing, we propose that the evidence is consistent with current, extant P. vivax populations having their origins in Africa.