FALL 2013
INTERNATIONAL
Neglected Tropical Diseases
A
lmost all of the most impoverished billion human beings suffer
from at least one infectious disease. A cluster of thirty diseases – collectively known as neglected tropical diseases – afflicts 1.4 billion people, more than
one-sixth of the global population. According to USAID, neglected tropical diseases tend to be concentrated in “the world’s
most vulnerable populations, almost exclusively poor and powerless people living
in rural areas and urban slums of low-income countries,” though there is increasing
documentation of their prevalence among
marginalized populations in the developed
world, such as urban African-Americans in
the southern United States. These diseases
cripple, disfigure, and scar their victims,
often leaving them subject to lifelong stigmatization or severely impairing their cognitive and economic potential. The result is
a poverty trap: due to deficient sanitation,
little access to health care, and proximity
to conflict, the world’s “bottom billion” are
particularly vulnerable to neglected tropical diseases; these diseases, in turn, deprive
USAID
How disease makes poverty permanent
by MICHAEL ZOOROB ‘16
their victims of the ability to improve their
position. As victims of these diseases tend
to be poor, uneducated, and politically disenfranchised, neglected tropical diseases
have garnered relatively little attention from
medical authorities in the developed world.
Unlike malaria or HIV/AIDS, the
names of these diseases may be unfamiliar but their prevalence and destruction are
staggering. According to the Population
Research Bureau, “roundworm (ascariasis) affects 807 million people worldwide;
whipworm (trichuriasis) affects 604 million; and hookworm affects 576 million.
The four other most common NTDs include schistosomiasis (snail fever), affecting about 200 million people; lymphatic
filariasis (elephantiasis), which affects 120
million people; blinding trachoma, affecting more than 80 million people; and onchocerciasis (river blindness), which affects
almost 40 million people.” Combined, due
to their chronic nature and the enormous
disability they create, neglected tropical
diseases may shave off as many disability-adjusted life years (a standard mea-
surement of the cost of illness) as malaria.
These neglected tropical diseases share
several characteristics in transmission, age,
and, of course, neglect. Several are caused
by helminths—worms or flukes—and others by protozoa, bacteria, fungi, or viruses. A few can pass directly from person to
person; others are transmitted by the bites
of insects or through contaminated soil
or water. Another shared characteristic of
these diseases is the role of conflict as a catalyst for their transmission. Many hotbeds
of neglected tropical diseases, such as the
Congo, are also rife with military conflict,
which tends to degrade sanitation, health
care, and housing conditions, as well as lead
to mass-migrations which spread diseases.
The recent conflict in Syria has promulgated the outbreak of the neglected tropical
disease gastroenteritis, a flesh-eating bacteria sometimes known as the Aleppo Evil.
Although sometimes deadly in their
own right, neglected tropical diseases
mostly cause chronic disability, including
blindness. Several disfigure and stigmatize
sufferers. Trachoma, for example, causes
swelling of the eye, corneal scarring, and
eventually, permanent blindness. Schistosomiasis leads ?????????????????????????)??????????????????????????????????)???????????????????????????1???????)???????????????????????????????)??????????????????????????????????)=?????????????????????????????????)?????????????????????????Q????????????)??????????????????????????????????)??????????????????????????????????????????????????????Q????????????????)?????????????????????????????????)???????????????????????????????????)?????????????????????????????????((?((0