People, place, animal, disease

In an article published in The Hindu this morning about the difficulties of developing an ebolavirus vaccine, I wrote: Many NTDs [neglected tropical diseases] are caused by eukaryotic parasites, i.e. worms and protozoa, which develop in multiple stages across multiple hosts, complicating researchers’ efforts to identify a stable antigen for vaccines to target. The immune system also struggles to confer lasting protection against infections by these organisms, making them categorically harder to vaccinate against than, say, measles. On a second reading, a particular point caught my eye. NTDs are prevalent in the world’s tropical and the subtropical areas. Most of the world’s poor people are also located in this belt (and/or a few degrees above/below). Their poverty can be traced back to colonial-era exploits and plunder and the unstable governments that followed since their independence. The disease-causing pathogens in these regions also seem more complicated, developing in stages and…