Smallpox is the only human pathogen has ever been eradicated; guinea worm was set to be the second by 2020—until now.WHO has “quietly” rolled back that target to 2030, reports Leslie Roberts. The horrifically painful parasite, known to live in…
September 16, 2019
Life at 5100 meters comes with a host of challenges, but in Peru's La Rinconada, it's the thin air—just half the oxygen as at sea level—that interests scientists. The world’s highest human settlement, La Rinconada is the global capital of chronic mountain sickness, a…
July 19, 2019
More than 220 million people worldwide suffer from schistosomiasis, and the infection is well known in the global health community.
July 12, 2019
Later this month, Malawi will submit evidence to the WHO that it has eliminated lymphatic filariasis, meaning its prevalence has fallen below 1%. The parasite causes the debilitating, stigmatizing elephantiasis and excessive scrotal swelling in men—and in 2003 was endemic…
June 26, 2019
A $2 on-the-spot diagnostic test could reinvigorate efforts to fight yaws—a “forgotten disease.” Affecting thousands of the world’s poorest children, the bacterial skin disease causes lesions and ulcers all over the body. Left untreated, its victims become disabled and…
May 24, 2019
Start the clock. After 24 hours, some 7,400 people will have been bitten by snakes, and 220 to 380 of them will die. That means 81,000 to 138,000 deaths every year. And 400,000 serious injuries such as amputations. But those are just estimates. No one knows how many…
May 15, 2019
Tsetse flies, vectors of trypanosomiasis, thrive in the tropical climes of sub-Saharan Africa—killing thousands annually. But Nigerian scientist Emmanuel Balogun, a biochemist at Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, is determined to thwart the parasites that cause sleeping…
May 7, 2019
Black mamba. Mozambique spitting cobra. Puff adder. Living in the largely rural Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) means living among these notorious snakes, the country’s main perpetrators of snakebite envenoming, WHO reports.
April 18, 2019
Tick-Borne Relapsing Fever—caused by infected Borrelia bacteria transmitted via tick bites—seems rare. But is this due to low prevalence or because improper diagnoses have failed to capture its spread?
April 18, 2019
Left untreated, leprosy begins with discolored numb patches on the skin and eventually leaves people permanently disabled. Globally, the scourge of leprosy has largely subsided, but India still picks up over 100,000 new cases every year. Eliminating the disease means much…