REVIEW A review of wildlife tourism and meta-analysis of parasitism in Africa’s national parks and game reserves Paul Olalekan Odeniran 1 & Isaiah Oluwafemi Ademola 1 & Henry Olanrewaju Jegede 2 Received: 23 August 2017 /Accepted: 5 June 2018 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract The recent increase of parasitic diseases associated with wildlife tourism can be traced to human contact with wildlife and intense modification of wildlife habitat. The continental estimates of parasitic diseases among visited wildlife-tourists and mammalian wildlife present in conservation areas are lacking; therefore, a general review was necessary to provide insights into Africa’ s parasitic disease burden and transmission between humans and wildlife. A two-step analysis was conducted with searches in Ovid MEDLINE, EMBASE, PubMed, Web of Science and Global Health. All diseases reported without prevalence were grouped and analysed as categorical data while meta-analysis of prevalence rates of parasitic diseases in wildlife from national parks and reserves in Africa was conducted. Only 4.7% of the tourist centres reported routine wildlife diagnosis for parasitic diseases. Disease intensity shows that cryptosporidiosis and seven other parasitic diseases were observed in both human and wildlife; however, no significant difference in intensity between human and wildlife hosts was observed. Schistosomiasis intensity reports showed a significant increase (P < 0.05) while entamoebiasis showed a significant decrease (P < 0.05) in humans as compared to wildlife. Visiting tourists were more infected with malaria, while wildlife was more infected with parasitic gastroenteritis (PGE). The meta-analysis of wildlife revealed the highest prevalence of PGE with mixed parasites and lowest prevalence of Giardia spp. at 99.9 and 5.7%, respectively. The zoonotic and socioeconomic impact of some of these parasites could pose a severe public threat to tourism. Pre- and post-travel clinical examinations are important for tourists while routine examination, treatment and rational surveillance are important for these animals to improve wildlife tourism. Keywords Wildlife . Parasites . Tourists . Conservation areas . Africa Introduction Wildlife tourism has several facets that contribute to conser- vation efforts, improve anti-poaching initiatives, capacity building among the youth, advocacy for wildlife watching, and learning behavioural and adaptational features of diverse animals (UNWTO 2016). Wildlife viewing is now the focus of commercial tourism (Knight 2009 ), resulting in proliferation and diversification of opportunities to encounter wildlife (Higham and Shelton 2011). The international com- munity is committed to engaging in consistent activities to help reduce the devastating impact of wildlife crime and im- prove economy (Messer 2000). Africa has approximately 400 national parks and several game reserves with greatest visitor numbers in the southern and eastern regions. However, the increasing trend of emerging and re-emerging diseases togeth- er with unexpected epidemics in Africa is becoming a concern amongst tourists (Tompkins et al. 2015). Unfortunately, most of the causative agents have complex life cycles, making elim- ination difficult especially when the services of health workers are scarce or not available (Odeniran and Ademola 2016). It has been observed that the relationship between tourists and wild animals is extremely complex (Bejder et al. 2009) be- cause of the interplay between three major components of wildlife experience: site users, wildlife species and ecology of the viewing site (Duffus and Dearden 1990). There are seven categories of wildlife tourism products identified Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-018-5958-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Paul Olalekan Odeniran drpaulekode@gmail.com 1 Department of Veterinary Parasitology and Entomology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria 2 Veterinary Teaching Hospital, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria Parasitology Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-018-5958-8