This New York Times article gives a vivid description of one of the many diseases that have disappeared from the developed world, but remain a horrible fact of life in countries like Haiti. The article mentions, but doesn't link to, the Global Alliance to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis - an organization with strong ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
"...one great tragedy of lymphatic filariasis (pronounced lim-FAT-tick fill-ahr-EYE-us-sis) is that it is not curable.
Still, it is one of a handful of diseases world health experts hope to eliminate within a generation, because its spread can be prevented with deworming drugs that can even be distributed in household salt, an approach that wiped out the disease in China.
But the task is daunting, not merely because 120 million people in 80 countries have the worms, but also because of the stigma and secret shame that the affliction causes, particularly in men, turning filariasis into a disease the world hardly knows. Even where it is endemic — 40 million people suffer its symptoms in the world's most downtrodden places — it is cloaked in ignorance and misunderstanding. "
Link to Beyond Swollen Limbs, a Disease's Hidden Agony - New York Times
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