Neglected Tropical Diseases: Global Perspectives

Abstract

Twenty diseases are classified as neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), including Buruli ulcer, Chagas disease, dengue and chikungunya, dracunculiasis (Guinea-worm disease), echinococcosis, foodborne trematodiases, human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), leishmaniasis, leprosy (Hansen's disease), lymphatic filariasis, mycetoma, chromoblastomycosis and other deep mycoses, onchocerciasis (river blindness), rabies, scabies and other ectoparasitoses, schistosomiasis, soil-transmitted helminthiases, snakebite envenoming, taeniasis/cysticercosis, trachoma, and yaws and other endemic treponematoses. More than a billion people worldwide are affected by NTD, mostly in tropical nations and areas of armed conflict. The major nations reporting NTDs included Brazil and the Amazon region, the Gran Chaco, Mesoamerica, and Texas of the Americas, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Adjoining Nations: South Sudan, Northern Uganda, and Angola; Nigeria, Chad, Niger, and Mali; and Adjoining Sahelian Areas of Sub-Saharan Africa; Indonesia; and Papua New Guinea of Asia; and Oceania.^1,2