Parasitic Diseases: Chemotherapy with a Twist

Abstract

The neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) consist of a group of parasitic and bacterial infections that affect 120% of the world’s current population. Up to 90% of those affected live in remote, rural areas or in urban slums in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, areas that are characterized by a vicious circle of sustained poverty and endemic diseases that makes people unable to care for themselves. The overall aim of the Millennium Development Goals approach [1] is to lift 1 billion of the least privileged people out of such situations, promising substantial benefits for vulnerable populations around the world. Control of the NTDs is a critical component of this endeavour and should be dealt with at an early stage, because it would have immediate knock-on effects on other health-related conditions, such as malaria morbidity and human immunodeficiency virus transmission. Soon after the creation of the People’s Republic of China, Chairman Mao Zedong initiated his celebrated campaign against the most common NTDs by famously attacking the snail, which is the intermediate host of schistosomiasis, in his poem “Farewell to the God of Plague” [2].