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Pros And Cons Of Tropical Diseases

Good Essays

Measles, Typhoid and Hepatitis B. These are diseases that have vaccines developed against them. What else do they have in common? Well, they are all located in temperate regions. Wolfe et al. listed 25 major infectious diseases, with 15 being temperate diseases and 10 being tropical diseases. Of the 15 temperate diseases listed, 13 have vaccines ready to keep them in check.

Shifting our attention to tropical diseases would show the complete opposite. Of the 10 tropical diseases listed, only 2 have vaccines developed against them. The contrast is astounding. Diseases such as African Sleeping Sickness and Visceral Leishmaniasis have caused numerous deaths and are not easy to overlook as a vaccine target. So why has a vaccine yet to be developed against them?

Tropical diseases versus …show more content…

You might be thinking that these diseases must be rather minor for them to be neglected. In fact, that cannot be further from the truth.

Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) consists of a number of infectious diseases including schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis and cysticercosis. Unlike Malaria, these diseases tend to have low mortality, which partially explains why they have been neglected. These diseases are mostly chronic in nature. Although they seldom cause death, these disease manifest themselves in the form of bodily problems such as blindness, disfigurement and malnutrition.

The second reason why these diseases tend to be neglected is the demographics of the people they affect. NTDs mostly affect the poor, as the spread of many of these diseases are facilitated by poor hygiene and sanitation. Would private companies want to invest on the research and development of a vaccine which will not have a commercial market? Would targeting NTDs generate any profits for these

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