#News: The World Finally Has Chance To Eliminate These Deadly Diseases

[HuffingtonPost]

By Alex Whiting                

LONDON, Feb 19 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - It is a little  known disease but it could make medical history if scientists'  predictions are correct: yaws could completely disappear by  2020, given the right resources.                

The only disease ever to have been eradicated is the deadly  smallpox. Guinea worm is nearly there, and polio too could be  added to the list.                

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday urged  developing countries to invest more in tackling so-called  neglected tropical diseases such as yaws, saying more investment  would alleviate human misery and free people trapped in poverty.                

Yaws affects mainly children and causes unsightly skin  ulcers and painful bone infections that can make walking  difficult. In some rare cases it can eat away people's noses.                

At least 50 million people were affected by the bacterial  infection in the 1950s. When the WHO launched mass treatment  campaigns with penicillin vaccines, the number of cases  plummeted by 95 percent by the end of the 1960s, according to  David Mabey, an expert in yaws and professor at the London  School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.                

"But then it fell off the agenda. And we're trying to put it  back on," Mabey said in an interview.                

Yaws is known to be prevalent in 12 countries in areas where  people have little access to healthcare, mainly in West and  Central Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands.                

It should be easy to eradicate, because scientists have  found that a single dose of the relatively cheap drug  azithromycin, given orally, is as effective as the penicillin  injections of old, Mabey said.                

He was recently part of a team of researchers who were able  to confirm this in Papua New Guinea. Their findings were  published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine.                                

MAIM AND BLIND                

Yaws is one of a group of 17 neglected tropical diseases  (NTDs) that affect 1.5 billion people, among them the world's  poorest. They maim or blind people, are often debilitating and  sometimes fatal.                

"The NTDs are a huge global health priority, and that's  really motivated donors and endemic countries to pull together,"  Helen Hamilton, NTD policy advisor at Sightsavers and chair of  the UK Coalition against NTDs said in an interview.                

Because most NTDs affect only certain geographical areas,  experts say that given the right resources many of them can  cease to be a public health risk.                

But challenges remain. "One of the things that worries me is  the sustainability of all of this," Simon Croft, professor of  parasitology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical  Medicine, said in an interview.                

"It's not just going to just happen overnight - how do we  keep it going when we know the attention of politicians is about  three years at best?" he said.                

Another concern is that once a disease has been curbed, as  happened with leprosy, politicians and health officials put a  tick in the box, forget about it, and it comes back, Croft said.                

Despite donations of free treatments by drug companies to  fight NDTs, not enough money is spent on getting drugs and tools  to the people who need them, David Molyneux, professor at  Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said in an interview.                

Less than 1 percent of official international development  aid for health is spent on NTDs, Molyneux said. Malaria,  tuberculosis and AIDS attract much of the funds.                

Molyneux led a team of scientists that crisscrossed Nigeria  checking for guinea worm, declaring the country free of the  disease in 2013. He was also involved in a campaign to eliminate  river blindness in West Africa.                

Bednets, insecticides and free or very cheap drugs can help  curb many of the diseases.                

"We're dealing with something here where ... we can have a  profound health impact with very cheap tools," he said.      (Reporting by Alex Whiting, Editing by Ros Russell)
Source: huffingtonPost