Table 1.

Medline search strategy

1	“africa south of the sahara”/ or africa, central/ or cameroon/ or central african republic/ or chad/ or congo/ or “democratic republic of the congo”/ or equatorial guinea/ or gabon/ or africa, eastern/ or burundi/ or djibouti/ or eritrea/ or ethiopia/ or kenya/ or rwanda/ or somalia/ or sudan/ or tanzania/ or uganda/ or africa, southern/ or angola/ or botswana/ or lesotho/ or malawi/ or mozambique/ or namibia/ or south africa/ or swaziland/ or zambia/ or zimbabwe/ or africa, western/ or benin/ or burkinafaso/ or cape verde/ or cote d'ivoire/ or gambia/ or ghana/ or guinea/ or guinea-bissau/ or liberia/ or mali/ or mauritania/ or niger/ or nigeria/ or senegal/ or sierra leone/ or togo/
2	comoros/ or madagascar/ or mauritius/ or reunion/ or seychelles/
3	mayotte.mp.
4	(sao tome and principe).mp. [mp = title, abstract, original title, name of substance word, subject heading word, protocol supplementary concept, rare disease supplementary concept, unique identifier]
5	saint helena.mp.
6	prevalence/
7	prevalen*.tw.
8	incidence/
9	incidence*.tw
10	(disease adj3 burden*).tw.
11	epilep*.tw.
12	epilepsy/ or epilepsies, myoclonic/ or myoclonic epilepsies, progressive/ or lafora disease/ or merrf syndrome/ or unverricht-lundborg syndrome/ or myoclonic epilepsy, juvenile/ or epilepsies, partial/ or epilepsy, complex partial/ or epilepsy, frontal lobe/ or epilepsy, partial, motor/ or epilepsy, partial, sensory/ or epilepsy, rolandic/ or epilepsy, temporal lobe/ or epilepsy, benign neonatal/ or epilepsy, generalized/ or epilepsy, absence/ or epilepsy, tonic-clonic/ or spasms, infantile/ or epilepsy, posttraumatic/ or epilepsy, reflex/ or landau-kleffner syndrome/ or seizures/ or seizures, febrile/ or status epilepticus/ or epilepsiapartialis continua/
13	1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5
14	6 or 7 or 8 or 9 or 10
15	11 or 12
16	13 and 14 and 15
17	limit 20 to yr = ”1980-Current”