The World Health Organization (WHO) on June 20 declared that Chad became the 51st nation to eliminate Sleeping Sickness (Human African trypanosomiasis, or HAT) and recognized this as a milestone in the global fight against this deadly disease. HAT is one of the deadly disease in the WHO’s “Neglected Tropical Disease” category. Chad is the first country this year to completely eliminate a deadly disease. HAT is transmitted by the bite of an infected tsetse fly, but is actually caused by two different protozoan parasites. Untreated, HAT is fatal, and while there is still no cure, with treatment the infected person can live a normal life.
Along with Chad, other African countries that have eliminated HAT include Togo, Benin, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, and Rwanda. WHO credits years of hard work by health workers at Chad’s Department of Health and their surveillance, testing, and insect eradication programs. Chad’s very optimistic health department is now looking for the next disease to conquer.
While many western pharmaceutical companies invest billions into developing and marketing Viagra or similar “lifestyle” medicines to cater to the world’s most wealthy, there are 1.6 billion people in a life-or-death struggle with either preventable or curable tropical diseases. According to the Washington Post, WHO’s “Neglected Tropical Diseases” category covers diseases that threaten mostly rural, impoverished people in 100 countries. However, many of these diseases are not merely “neglected” but rather willfully spread by economic hitmen, regime-change fanatics, zero growth kooks, environmentalists, and others. For example, Dengue Fever had been eradicated in the western hemisphere in the 1950’s due to effective mosquito eradication efforts, and by the 1960 it was contained to only 8 countries in the world. Now 100 countries have Dengue Fever.
The lesson of Chad’s modest accomplishment is that the most basic public health measures, such as the eradication of mosquitos and attention to proper water management can conquer a “neglected tropical disease.” Yet, the experts at Cambridge University assign blame to China’s Belt and Road development for spreading these tropical diseases! The simple reality is that the core true cause of the spread of neglected tropical diseases is not economic development, but imposed backwardness.
