Year: 2021
Type: editorial
Abstract: The Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez stated in his last will, "la muerte no llega con la vejez, sino con el olvido" ("death does not come with old age, but with oblivion").Indeed, how many deaths due to tropical diseases can be avoided?How can investment in these neglected diseases significantly change the course of the disease?Even in a macro vision, how could the socioeconomic condition of those affected by these diseases be changed to avoid transmission, morbidity, and mortality?We must rescue tropical and emerging global diseases from oblivion, and the rescue begins with us.Despite significant advances in diagnostic tools, sequencing technologies (1-5), new drugs, and vaccine development using precision medicine (6-9), pharmacogenomics (10-12), computational and in silico models (13-16), and artificial intelligence (17-20); the benefits of these accomplishments have not been fully realized in the field of emerging and re-emerging vector-borne and zoonotic diseases (21).Emerging vector-borne and zoonotic diseases are a growing threat to global health and have caused hundreds of billions of US dollars of economic damage in the past 20 years ( 22).Together, these infections are responsible for a substantial disease burden, with endemic and enzootic zoonoses, and metaxenic diseases causing about a billion cases of illness in people and millions of deaths every year (22).Moreover, old foes with us for hundreds [like Chagas disease (23-25)] or thousands [like leprosy or Hansen's disease (26-28)] of years are yet to be eliminated or controlled in many countries.This is the tragedy of neglected tropical diseases.Disinterest and disincentive are monstrous impediments to the progress that could be made by governments, major pharmaceutical companies, and other actors in the development of new drugs, research initiatives, diagnostics, and vaccines for these diseases.The rescue from oblivion is accomplished in multiple ways, including increasing visibility; generating, disseminating, and implementing new knowledge and evidence; elaborating strategies and tools for the benefit of communities and patients, and pursuing research in a more integrated and comprehensive form, but also looking for ways to translate that research into policies.After millennia, standing in the dawn of the XXI century, we are at a crossroads.We can reinvigorate the global commitment to confront these problems; otherwise, several of these conditions will persist, taking millions of lives, causing substantial disability, and increasing poverty in already impoverished populations.This collection of articles endeavors to identify unique and essential challenges and opportunities for improving the management of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases.As
Source: Frontiers in Medicine
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,950
OpenAlex ID: W3191143492