Canids and domestic dogs are reservoir hosts of zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis (ZVL) caused by Leishmania infantum. Hence, one of the approaches to reduce the incidence of human ZVL is to cull infected dogs (e.g >850 000 dogs are screened per year with 20 000 animals culled following positive diagnosis in Brazil). The impact of such dog culling programmes on human and canine ZVL incidence has bee doubted on theoretical and practical grounds.
