Parasites in Paradise
By PETER J. HOTEZ
NYT
Washington
PRESIDENT OBAMA has started an ambitious global health initiative that will deliver urgently needed medicine and preventative care to hundreds of millions of people in poor countries. Included in the plan are efforts to devote resources to “neglected tropical diseases,” afflictions like hookworm infections, river blindness and elephantiasis that many think have gone the way of smallpox, but which still make up the most common ailments among the world’s bottom billion.
When we talk about these diseases, we tend to think of distant places like West Africa and South Asia. As we develop the plan, however, it’s crucial that we remember that they plague communities much closer to home as well.
Just off the beautiful beaches of the Caribbean islands popular with American vacationers live millions who suffer from neglected tropical diseases. In Haiti and the Dominican Republic, more than 600,000 people are infected with lymphatic filariasis, a parasitic infection also known as elephantiasis for the profound disfigurement it produces in the limbs and genitals. In the Dominican Republic, 250,000 people are infected with the blood flukes that cause schistosomiasis, and more than a million in the region have hookworms. Intestinal worms are also common in Jamaica, Barbados and Grenada, where they cause chronic anemia, as well as stunted growth and impaired intellectual development in children.
The prevalence of these diseases in the Caribbean is at least in part a tragic consequence of the slave trade. When slavers transported 11 million human captives from West Africa to the New World, they brought parasites and infections that flourished in the horrific conditions of plantation life.
(More here.)
NYT
Washington
PRESIDENT OBAMA has started an ambitious global health initiative that will deliver urgently needed medicine and preventative care to hundreds of millions of people in poor countries. Included in the plan are efforts to devote resources to “neglected tropical diseases,” afflictions like hookworm infections, river blindness and elephantiasis that many think have gone the way of smallpox, but which still make up the most common ailments among the world’s bottom billion.
When we talk about these diseases, we tend to think of distant places like West Africa and South Asia. As we develop the plan, however, it’s crucial that we remember that they plague communities much closer to home as well.
Just off the beautiful beaches of the Caribbean islands popular with American vacationers live millions who suffer from neglected tropical diseases. In Haiti and the Dominican Republic, more than 600,000 people are infected with lymphatic filariasis, a parasitic infection also known as elephantiasis for the profound disfigurement it produces in the limbs and genitals. In the Dominican Republic, 250,000 people are infected with the blood flukes that cause schistosomiasis, and more than a million in the region have hookworms. Intestinal worms are also common in Jamaica, Barbados and Grenada, where they cause chronic anemia, as well as stunted growth and impaired intellectual development in children.
The prevalence of these diseases in the Caribbean is at least in part a tragic consequence of the slave trade. When slavers transported 11 million human captives from West Africa to the New World, they brought parasites and infections that flourished in the horrific conditions of plantation life.
(More here.)
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