Some overlooked good news from 2023: Six countries knock out 'neglected' diseases

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2024/01/03/ [login to see] /some-overlooked-good-news-from-2023-six-countries-kayo-neglected-diseases
Xavier Vaheed-DNDi, James Gathany/CDC, AFP via Getty Images
The patient – a man in his mid-30s – was languishing in a hospital in Bangladesh, infected with a disease called visceral leishmaniasis. He was so close to death he wasn't even eligible for the inadequate treatment then available: Thirty painful injections with a drug that often didn't work.

The disease, which is caused by a parasite spread by the bite of sandlies, had swelled his organs, recalls Dr. Dinesh Mondal, of the Dhaka-based research institute icddr,b. "His spleen was so big. His liver was not functioning. He was just left to die."

So Mondal asked the man if he was willing to be the first Bangladeshi to try a new option – an antifungal drug that the U.S. pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences had originally developed for patients battling cancer and AIDS.