**5. Conclusion**

The epidemiology of leishmaniasis is complex due to the diversity of protozoan, vector and reservoirs species, associated to a variety of clinical events. Early diagnosis and treatment of infected patients is crucial to direct public policies of VL control, especially because the disease has common clinical manifestations and geographic distributions with other infec‐ tions such as Chagas disease, malaria, schistosomiasis, typhoid fever and tuberculosis. In this context, molecular approaches to determine rates of *Lu. longipalpis* naturally infected with *Leishmania* allows the estimation of the transmission risk for VL and vectorial capacity in areas where many species of phlebotomine sandflies coexist.
