Neglected Tropical Diseases: A New Frontier in Fighting Poverty?

Do you know what neglected tropical diseases are? Very few people in the industrialized world have ever heard of them because they have been largely eradicated by new vaccines and drugs. However, outside of the developed countries, they are major drag on productivity in the developing world, and major blight on poorest billion souls. Ranging from leprosy, to, onchocerciasis, and river blindness, among many others: N.T.D.'s are non-lethal tropical diseases with a whole array of symptoms that cause blindness, inflated limbs, fatigue, and risks to pregnancy. However, unlike HIV Aids, they are not fatal, and by and large curable; they are also cheaper to cure than Aids. Besides the cheaper costs there several other advantages to focusing more R&D on N.T.D.S: many of the drugs are effective even if taken once a year, and various studies have proven that demonstrated the possibility and safety of simultaneously delivering three of the most commonly used drugs that target all six major worm infections at one time, while an antibacterial drug for trachoma can be administered at a later date. I am not suggesting that we scrap funding for HIV or neglecting it as second-tier priority, but we should give N.T.D. more prominence in U.S. Global health policy. Many good consequences- for the U.S. and the world- can come from an assertive world-wide initiative against NTDs.

Around half of those infected hail from majority Muslim countries where suspicion of U.S. motives run deep: Yemen, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Iraq. For U.S. foreign policy to be successful we need to find ways to win hearts and minds: this where combatting NTDs come into play. However, there are major challenges to this approach: endemic corruption, violence, and intense suspicion of outsiders. But if the U.S. can find reliable partners in those parts of the world to distribute the aid, the initiative could very well succeed in its mission; good will for the U.S. By alleviating their diseases, in effect, we alleviate their poverty. Beyond the Muslim world, this approach could yield big dividends in Latin America ( river blindness), and Africa (elphantiasis). Behind the moral arguments of eradicating N.T.D.s, there are practical ones as well: Falling poverty, equals greater demand for goods, equals greater demand for American goods. Obama just announced a five year-initiative for doubling American exports world-wide to bring down our debt and unemployment rate, and by focusing on alleviating poverty, we create a bigger market for American goods ( airplanes, agriculture, computers, cell phones and software), which could go long way to reducing our debt and brining down our stubbornly high unemployment rate.