In August 1996, a 48 years old man living in Burkina Faso was referred to the Institut Pasteur in Algeria as a strongly suspected case of CL. His cutaneous lesions had appeared in July 1996, at the end of a one-month visit to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. The patient had lived in Algiers for one year before the lesions developed, and had not travelled outside the city apart from his visit to Ouagadougou. The patient had 15 cutaneous sores located on the forearms (6 lesions), legs (6) and trunk (3). All the lesions were 2-3 cm in diameter, ulcerated and covered with crusts. The diagnosis was confirmed by both detection of amastigotes on direct impression smears and culture of material obtained by puncture of a lesion on blood-agar medium. The culture became positive after 48 h incubation, and promastigotes were isoenzymatically characterized by starch gel electrophoresis using 15 enzymes according to Rioux et al. (1990). The strain (MHOM/BF/96/LIPA538) was identified as Leishmania major zymodeme MON-74. The patient was treated with meglumine antimoniate (Glucantime registered ), 6 mg Sb super(v)/kg/d for 21 d. At the end of treatment, the lesions had disappeared and both smears and culture were negative. This is the first report of L. major from Burkina Faso. The zymodeme found (MON-74) differs from L. major MON-26 in only a single enzyme, diaphorase (DIA super(90) instead of DIA super(100)).