The Challenge for Humanity
Two billion people are infected with hookworms, whipworms, and Ascaris. These intestinal roundworms are one of the leading, if not the leading cause, of disease burden in hundreds of millions of school-aged children. Half the children in sub-Saharan Africa are infected. Infected children grow up stunted physically and retarded cognitively. The parasites cause malnutrition, result in reduced energy and strength, and are a leading source of school absenteeism. Some have said that the best way to get children in developing countries into school might not be to build more schools but to deworm them. People that are infected have compromised immune systems, making them more susceptible to HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, amongst other diseases. The parasites cause vaccines to fail. Pregnant women who are infected are more likely to die or to have their babies die or be born under-weight. Intestinal parasitic roundworms are one of the great diseases of our time.
The power of these parasites was put into perspective during the turn of the 20th century when the Rockefeller Foundation studied hookworm infections in the South. They found that children infected with hookworms grew up to make 40% less money than uninfected children and found that the
parasites lowered their eventual educational attainment by over 2 years. These worm infections accounted for 22% of the large 1900 income gap between the Northern and Southern United States.
What have we done? There are four approved drugs, none of which are totally effective and all of which were developed to treat parasites in veterinary animals or other diseases. Imagine going to your doctor with an ailment and asking for veterinary drugs! That’s the current state of treatment. Furthermore, there are increasing reports of parasite resistance to all the drugs we use. In the past 30 years, only one new drug has been developed. Last year, of the 3 billion dollars spent for researching neglected tropical diseases, ~$720,000 (0.02%) went specifically towards the development of drugs against hookworms, whipworms, and Ascaris, despite the fact that they account for a tremendous amount of disease burden, estimated to be comparable to that of malaria and tuberculosis.