The phrase ‘‘the 800-pound gorilla in the room’’ refers to an obvious problem that everyone knows exists but pretends or chooses to ignore. In my December 2007 PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases editorial I wrote about an unseemly underbelly of poverty that exists in my country, the United States of America, and the unacceptable disease burden among our poor that results from such neglected disea...

BACKGROUND The level of funding provides a good proxy for the level of commitment or prioritisation given to a particular issue. While the need for research relevant to social, economic, cultural and behavioural aspects of neglected tropical diseases (NTD) control has been acknowledged, there is limited data on the level of funding that supports NTD social science research. METHOD A case stud...

A parasitological survey in northern Lao PDR showed a remote ethnic minority village to be hyper-endemic for Taenia solium, a Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) that impacts human and pig health. An intervention combining human Mass Drug Administration (MDA) with porcine vaccination and antihelmintic treatment was then implemented, targeting both T. solium and other soil-transmitted helminths. To...

Objectives Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, is a slowly progressive and chronic infectious neglected tropical disease (NTD) caused by Mycobacterium leprae. This study was performed to assess the epidemiological trend of leprosy in past five years three districts Tanzania which prevention intervention (PEP4LEP) implemented, determine case detection delay at baseline. Methods Secondary da...

Dr. Julio Frenk, the former dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, has said (in a personal communication) that “The greatest threat to global health is dichotomous thinking, thinking that things are either black or white, all good or all bad.” This sort of thinking is simplistic and often prevents us from seeing how to best solve our most serious problems, pitting advocates against each o...

In 2000, 189 member states of the United Nations (UN) developed a plan for peace and development, which resulted in eight actionable goals known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Since their inception, the MDGs have been considered the international standard for measuring development progress and have provided a blueprint for global health policy and programming. However, emphasis upo...