Research data shows that neglected tropical diseases are becoming increasingly present in severely poverty-stricken areas throughout the United States.

Evidence shows that exotic illnesses not usually found in the United States are popping up in the poorest areas of the nation.

Known as neglected tropical diseases, these parasites and bacteria affect 1 billion people globally, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

What Are Neglected Tropical Diseases?

The World Health Organization estimates that more than one-sixth of the world’s population suffers from at least one neglected tropical disease.
Image: PLOS

About 12 million U.S. residents have a neglected tropical disease, according to Dr. Peter Hotez, founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor University’s College of Medicine. The study was conducted by Hotez and his team of researchers in 2014. It was later published in the journal PLOS.

Researchers discovered that tropical disease was most common in the poorest populations living in the world’s top 20 major economies.

“We already have dengue (and chikungunya) in Texas and in the Gulf Coast, and I think we’ll start to see transmission of both diseases in the coming years,” Hotez said.

The diseases are classified as neglected because they have been largely ignored by the medical community despite their creeping growth. Health professionals haven’t focused on finding ways to prevent or treat tropical diseases because they come with few or mild symptoms that do not usually lead to death.

The prevalence of a disease called chikungunya has been growing in the U.S. since it was first identified in 2013. Despite the fact that chikungunya has been an endemic in Africa and Asia for decades, there is currently is no vaccine or cure for the disease.

The amount of cases of chikungunya in the United States hit 2,700 last year, according to the CDC. Recently, 39 states had reported a total of 510 cases in 2015.

The spread of another disease, called Dengue fever, has been of increasing concern to scientists. About 300 million people in Southeast Asia and Latin America are currently affected by Dengue fever.

Dengue fever is transmitted through a mosquito called the Aedes aegypti. The Aedes aegypti, attracted to calm bodies of water and warm climates, has been seen in Florida and Texas.

This means there is a greater chance the disease-carrying mosquito will become native in these areas. The disease may also mutate and spread to other species of mosquitoes in the U.S.

Impact On Disadvantaged Children

Children living in low-income housing with poor sanitation have the highest risk of developing neglected tropical diseases.
Image: All Len All

The Southern United States houses about 45 million poor Americans who live in warm, humid climates where mosquitoes flourish.

The real problem behind these diseases is their long-term effects on children. The diseases could be debilitating for the physical and cognitive development in children raised in poverty, who are already at an economic disadvantage.

The majority of children who will contract these diseases are living in low-income housing conditions with poor sanitation. Because of the contaminated environment, these groups is more susceptible to neglected tropical diseases.

Effort To Reduce Neglected Tropical Disease

The United States has contributed funding to prevent and treat diseases abroad, but critics claim that the government needs to direct efforts to its own at-risk communities.
Image: Yahoo News

For the past nine years, the United States has contributed to the global effort to provide drugs that prevent or treat the seven most prevalent neglected tropical diseases, including hookworm, trachoma, river blindness and elephantiasis. The effort also attempts to improve sanitation and access to clean water in developing countries.

However, these programs have not been implemented in the United States. The lack of awareness about tropical diseases is particularly strong in impoverished areas, in addition to the fact that public health departments and hospitals are not equipped to take on crises related to tropical diseases.

Louisiana spends about $15 a year on public health for each resident. The state reported 10 cases of chikungunya and one case of dengue fever last year.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation conducted a study in 2014 and discovered that only half of states can efficiently detect, diagnose, prevent and respond to a disease threat.

According to Hotez, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa gave a new meaning to preparedness. The lack of readiness in dealing with the Ebola epidemic has prompted other nations to find new ways to face unexpected diseases.

Developing vaccines for tropical diseases, in addition to hospital preparedness, is extremely important. Many critics believe that Ebola could have been contained if these concerns had been addressed.

Later this month, the world’s top infectious disease experts will meet at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene to discuss ways to improve the understanding of these diseases and how to prevent them.

According to Hotez, tropical diseases are neglected by the American medical community because they disproportionately affect the poorest individuals. He believes this will only change when the diseases spread to higher socioeconomic classes.

“It’s an inconvenient truth many people don’t want to recognize,” Hotez said.

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Primate testing has resulted in an effective vaccination for Ebola

Researchers, doctors and politicians across the globe have been working to put an end to the Ebola outbreak that ravaged West Africa and killed almost 10,000 people in 2014. As scientists attempted to discover the best preventative option, certain vaccine candidates came to the forefront.

The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Profectus BioSciences, Inc. have since developed a vaccine that tackles Ebola Zaire, which is the West African Makona strain of the virus. There are five species of Ebola that have been identified, and the Zaire strain is credited with causing the 2014 outbreak.

The vaccine embeds the Ebola Zaire species within vesicular stomatitis, which is a form of the rabies virus that is not harmful to humans. The “Trojan horse” method allows the virus to enter into the body in a small dose so it can work toward creating a plan to fight it. The vaccine successfully caused a positive immune response when tested in a primate.

The vaccine is meant to be highly efficient and easily administered with a single dose. However, researchers are going a step further to solidify the safety of the vaccine. In addition to the original first-generation candidate, the team has developed two vaccines with weakened forms of the virus.

Contact between humans and nonhuman hosts with the Ebola Zaire virus, such as bats, will continue to rise. The development and distribution of an effective vaccine is a top priority. The candidates are currently under evaluation.

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Alexis Benter

The military hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone, conducted a controlled clinical trial in which 35 ebola patients received blood transfusions from donors who survived the disease. Though comparisons with the control arm of the study are not currently available, officials reported that 80 percent of the blood recipients lived. In a nation where the survival rate for the disease is below 50 percent, this is absolutely something to cheer about.

Could Antibody Proteins Block the Virus?

Proponents of the blood transfusion tactic believe that antibody proteins, which are slowly produced by the immune system, are most likely responsible for blocking the ebola virus in the weeks following infection. The treatment is particularly promising because blood plasma contains these antibodies. Since plasma can be donated more frequently than blood, this bodes well for patients in need. In addition, the tactic could potentially save more lives because the donated plasma can be stored for long periods of time.

Blood Treatments Prove Vital for Future Outbreaks

Though the initial findings are very promising, the blood plasma treatments will not have a significant impact in this current outbreak’s death toll, which has climbed past 9,253 individuals. However, these treatments will prove vital for future ebola outbreaks.

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Another benefit of the blood treatment is that it is essentially owned by the countries themselves. The medical industries won’t have to endure the headaches that come with paying high prices of buying pharmaceuticals from Big Pharma.

“The countries really liked the blood option more than the drugs because there is no manufacturer behind it and no international regulatory approvals required,” says David Wood, a virologist at the World Health Organization.

Despite the benefits, the blood transfusion tactic is not yet ready to be implemented on a massive scale. At the blood bank headquarters in Freetown, donor blood is stored in a rusted refrigerator, and lab technicians enter vital data on outdated computers. There is also the threat of blood spoiling from unreliable electricity.

Thankfully, the World Bank granted $200,000 to the Sierra Leonean blood trial, and several other donors committed more than $3.3 million to the plasma studies. A portion of this budget will go toward the purchase of medical equipment, refrigerators and infrastructure. Professionals are hopeful that the blood transfusion tactic will one day put an end to the ebola virus for good.

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Alexis Benter

The Ebola epidemic in 2014 represents the largest outbreak of the deadly disease in the recorded history of mankind. The devastating illness has killed more than 10,000 people and affected more than 22,000.

While the virus sprinted through West African nations, many global organizations criticized the World Health Organization’s African leadership as being slow and weak to respond to the outbreak. Some cite the WHO’s response in Africa as a primary reason that the Ebola outbreak spread so quickly.

However, there is hope for the WHO’s African office. The organization appointed Dr. Matshidiso Moeti as the new regional director for Africa. Dr. Moeti brings a wide array of experience and knowledge to the organization, which was once seen as a resume booster for political officials with little experience but many connections.

Hope For A Better African System

Dr. Moeti acknowledged the WHO’s weak response to the initial Ebola outbreak and placed attention to Ebola as her number one priority. She plans on eliminating the spread of the disease and reducing the number of individuals affected to zero. While the tragedy surrounding Ebola is immense, Moeti hopes that it will serve as a catalyst to improve health care in Africa as a whole and make it a priority to improve the quality of health care in African nations.

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As a native of the Republic of Botswana, Moeti brings a wealth of knowledge regarding health care and infectious diseases. She possesses more than 35 years of health care experience with WHO, UNICEF, UNAIDS and the Botswana Ministry of Health. She was at the head of the WHO Regional Office for Africa’s attempts at treating the HIV/AIDS pandemic and was the Director of Noncommunicable Diseases from 2008 to 2011. Moeti received degrees in medical and public health from the University of London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Dr. Moeti provides an optimistic attitude towards the situation unfolding in Africa right now. This attitude will be crucial to ending the Ebola crisis as well as improving Africa’s health care system.

“I commit myself and colleagues to build on what we have created so far and I am confident that we will ride on the positive things happening in the Region,” said Moeti in an article on the World Health Organization’s website.

Featured image courtesy of: Facebook

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As headlines shift away from the Ebola outbreak that flourished in 2014, it’s easy to forget the disease that “sickened more than 200,000 people in West Africa, and killed at least 8,200, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).”

Although current data shows that the number of new cases is dropping in all three of the hardest-hit West African countries (Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea), and a recent study shows that Ebola could possibly be eliminated from the country of Liberia by June, scientists are working hard to create a vaccine for the disease.

“The idea of predicting infectious disease is relatively new. It’s not like weather predictions,” says Jeffrey Shaman, an associate professor at Mailman School of Public Health, in an interview with NPR. With this in mind, several companies are racing to test their experimental vaccines in an effort to put a standstill to the deadly disease.

Currently, there are three experimental vaccines that show signs of success. All three of them are being tested in humans in a remarkably fast pace due to the urgency of the situation.

The Top Three Most Promising Vaccinations

1. Johnson & Johnson’s Ebola Vaccine: The vaccine carries modified versions of a human cold virus and the smallpox virus, along with small parts of the genetic material of the Ebola virus. The little amount of Ebola contained may be enough to administer an immune response against the virus—meaning the body can find a way to resist the effects.

J & J started their Phase 1 trial to test the vaccine on healthy volunteers in the United Kingdom on Tuesday, Jan. 6. The purpose of the first round is to identify potential side effects of the drug before it’s administered to a larger group of people. The vaccine is being developed by J & J’s Janssen Pharmaceutical Cos. and Bavarian Nordic. Over 400,000 regimens of this vaccine have been produced that could then be used in larger trials by April.

2. GlaxoSmithKline’s Ebola Vaccine: This vaccine is further along in its development, having its Phase 1 results already published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Nov. 26, 2014. The research showed that the vaccine appeared to be effective in test subjects.

The study was done on 20 healthy adult volunteers within the United States who eventually produced antibodies against the Ebola virus. According to Reuters, Phase 2 of the trial on a larger group of people may begin in February in Africa.

3. Merck & Co.’s Ebola Vaccine: This vaccine experienced some complications in its Phase 1 trials when one of the volunteers began to experience joint pain. Testing was immediately stopped, and resumed later on when the symptoms resolved without treatment, according to the University of Geneva hospital in Switzerland.

A lower dosage of the vaccine is now being administered in trials. There has long been a debate on the urgency of a vaccine development for this deadly infectious virus in the past—which you can read all about here.

But, with monetary and medical complications pushed to the side, a safe and effective Ebola vaccination is well on its way to being used in the real world. The Ebola vaccine is expected to be available for mass use in summer 2015 at the earliest, according to the WHO.

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Turn on the news and chances are you will be hear about the Ebola virus.

The 2014 Ebola epidemic is noted as the largest in history, especially affecting West African countries Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. And with 13,567 people known to have contracted the virus and over 5,000 dead, the question that comes up is: Why so many? Well this is where the debate begins.

Why Isn’t There Already a Vaccine for Ebola?

This is the question that many of us are asking right now. The World Health Organization blames the drug industry’s drive for profit. WHO Director Dr. Margaret Chan states “a profit-driven industry does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay,” referring to the impoverished African countries.

The Incredible Expense, That’s What.

One of the main reasons that there has been no Ebola vaccine out on the market yet is because of the large cost and time associated with it. It is estimated that its costs about $1.89 billion to introduce a new drug to the market. Pharmaceutical companies have a need to stay profitable. With the costs of developing new drugs being so high, Big Pharma is averse to investing in a drug that will not earn back its cost of development. This reality leads to the lack of drugs being developed for illnesses, such as Ebola, that affect poor African nations.

What’s Next?

The damage that the virus has done is pretty obvious. Maybe with the virus spreading to other countries–like the United States–the drug industry will take this as a push for developing a vaccine. The WHO says that experimental vaccine testing on humans could begin in early 2015. But for now, many can agree that a solution to this epidemic is needed–fast.

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